Israel's future hangs on decisions being made in Washington and Tehran, and this VPRO Backlight film, directed by Marije Meerman, sets out to map what a coming confrontation might look like. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, once Colin Powell's chief of staff, warns that 'both places have idiots in charge,' pointing to a weapons-of-mass-destruction case against Iran that echoes the one built against Iraq. Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld and British historian Tony Judt weigh in on what preemptive strikes would mean for the region, while Israeli writer Etgar Keret offers a more personal view of living inside the uncertainty. American neoconservative Richard Perle and Christian Lebanese emigre Brigitte Gabriel argue for a harder line, and political scientist Anoush Ehteshami provides the Iranian counterweight. Filmed in 2007 as talk of strike plans and sanctions was hardening into policy, the documentary treats the Middle East as a place where rhetoric on both sides risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, and lets its interviewees argue that case without resolving it.