IMHO an update on the original 2008 theme, an article in The Guardian 'Is the Middle East heading for a full-blown religious war?':http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...war?CMP=twt_gu

Vali Nasr is cited too and near the end:
Nasr, who is more optimistic than most, suggests, too, that the current tensions can be seen as marking the final unravelling of the shape of the region first conceived in the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement that foresaw the dismemberment of the Ottoman Turkish empire.

"Those structures are now coming undone: first under the boots of US soldiers in Iraq and more recently under the heels of the democracy protesters of the Arab spring."