[Since the publication of Tanaka Sakai's February report on the US road to war with Iran, vigorous international debate has been touched off by allegations of a critically important Israel lobby in US politics and the making of US policy in the Middle East. Tanaka offers an independent critical Japanese perspective on the forces driving US policy toward Iran, one that goes beyond discussion of the Israel lobby to consider the interaction between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam that has been driving the region and world toward Armageddon. But Sakai looks beyond the US-Islamic clash to examine the doctrinal roots of the Shia-Sunni divisions within Islam and their implications for the future of Iran and the region. In particular, he considers whether divisions internal to Islam will trump the deepening divide between Islamic and Christian fundamentalists. In either event, the prospects for Iran and the Middle East remain dark. MS]