The Defense Minister in the new Iraqi government, Sadoun Dulaimi, announced that Iraq has signed an agreement with Iran to receive military training for the newly formed Iraqi army. This was a function that had been performed by the United States. The Reuters News Agency reported that Dulaimi was asked whether this agreement might anger officials in Washington. His response was, “nobody can dictate to Iraq its relations with other countries.”

Isn’t this just great. More than 1,700 American troops have died in the Iraq war. In a wonderful show of gratitude, the new Iraqi government is moving to embrace our most implacable foe in the Middle East.

The seriousness of this development cannot be overestimated. We have to assume that Dulaimi is acting with the acquiescence of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari’s Shiite Muslim dominated government. This is more than a slap at the United States government. It is a manifestation of the deeply held Arab principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. What Dulaimi is saying, and implicitly Jafari, is that the Untied States is their enemy. Iran is their friend.

We can be angry and bitter at this action, but we shouldn’t be surprised. One of our most serious errors in dealing with the Middle East, and certainly Iraq, has been a failure to appreciate the depth of the animosity between Sunnis and Shiites. Their hatred spans centuries. Add to this the fact that throughout the Middle East, the Sunnis have consistently had the upper hand politically and economically. What this means is that the impoverished and dominated Shiites are chafing at their second class status. If they have a chance to rise up and seize control of the reigns of government, thereby dominating the Sunnis, they will do so with a vengeance. We have now given the Shiites precisely that opportunity in Iraq because of our espousal of democracy in a country where the Shiites are sixty percent of the population.

There is only one other Middle Eastern country in which the Shiites are in control. That is Iran. So it’s not surprising that these two regimes should have an affinity for each other.

The question is where does that leave the United States? On a daily basis we are bleeding and dying to solidify the Shiites’ grip on authority by killing insurgents, many of whom are from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni community. At the same time, we will increasingly be made to feel like outsiders.

This, too, is not surprising. Russia went into Afghanistan with its army to support the creation of a secular communist government. In response, a myriad of Islamic and other groups were determined to undermine the Russian backed government. These groups had enormous hostility toward each other. All they could agree upon was their hatred for the Russians and their desire to drive out the red army.

I am not suggesting that there are not many ordinary Iraqis who suffered under Saddam and are grateful for what we have done. Those Iraqis will not be running the country. Duliami’s agreement with the Iranians demonstrates that those in control have quite a different agenda. Once we have outlived our usefulness to them in quieting the insurgency, they will ask us to leave. They will then form their own holy axis with Tehran.

In confirmation of this point, two days after the agreement was announced, a Shiite cleric in southern Iraq, an area populated by Shiites, decreed that a petition be circulated demanding that U.S. and other foreign troops leave the country now. It is tempting to conclude that we should do just that. Bring home our troops and leave Jafari and Dulaimi to deal with a civil war with the Sunnis. Alas, we can’t do that. In our precarious economic and energy situation, we can’t risk all of that Iraqi oil falling into hostile hands.