President Bush’s new plans in Iraq will change nothing as long as America’s helpers there are Shiite zealots and “our man in Baghdad” remains the treacherous sectarian Prime Minister al-Maliki. If things were not as dire, it would’ve been amusing to note that this prime minister’s first name, Nouri, means “deceiver,” “doubledealer,” or “shyster” in the Egyptian Arabic dialect.

Unfortunately, so-called Arab-affairs experts guiding our policy in the region probably missed out on the pun’s wisdom because most do not speak the language, even though millions of Arabs have been feasting on it for months. Herein lies the American problem in Mesopotamia — great intentions and ideological zeal coupled unfortunately with poor scholarship and vast ignorance of Arab sociology and demography.

That’s too bad, because the Bush administration’s plan in the Middle East as defined by Secretary of State Rice last week — confronting Iran’s expansionism and its “destabilizing behavior” — is right on the money.

Unfortunately, working with Nouri “Shyster” al-Maliki to implement this vision is a nonstarter. In the past month, American forces in Baghdad and Irbil arrested at least eight Iranian military officers of the Revolutionary Guards. They were guests of the government of Iraq, and caught after their nefarious activities, which included training militias in how to make bombs and attack American troops, were scrutinized for months. It is an open secret to Western and Arab intelligence operatives that many more still are operating, under an open invitation from the prime minister and his inner Shiite circle in government.

Mr. Maliki’s other sinister schemes have not diminished even as he talks of cooperation. His latest move was naming an obscure Shiite army officer, Lieutenant General Aboud Qanbar — a man of no known accomplishments in the army — not only to lead but to change the Iraqi army. General Qanbar comes from the deep Shiite heartland of southern Iraq. Any regional expert who has been there knows the region to be practically an extension of neighboring Shiite Iran in every way, including the use of the Farsi language.

Experts from Mr. Bush’s staff should be drafting a memo by now that says: “The Iraqi army is the last institution retaining a modicum of patriotism, belief in a unified country, and relatively light sectarian divisions. We can rebuild it, but only if we keep Mr. Maliki’s paws off of it. The prime minister and his Iranian minders will do to the army what they have done to the national police, the security services, and the court system — namely, purge it of Sunnis and Kurdish officers and turn it into a Shiite instrument. We cannot let it happen.”

It may be too late, but if we are going to make this a real push, the plan must include essentials such as the removal of the entire Maliki government, the dissolution of the national police, security services, and other Shiite implants of the prime minister and his cohorts in education, development, and the government.

This is to be intertwined with fast-forwarding the reconstruction of the Iraqi army, bringing back Sunni officers who were dismissed, adding more Kurdish staff, and rehabilitating most of those retired Baathist junior- and middle-level party apparatchiks.

Until a rejuvenated Iraqi army can start coming forward to take power, American army generals must immediately assume responsibility. It will take at least a year to see results, but a lot of angst will be removed with Mr. Maliki’s dismissal. Iraq is not a democracy, so there is no need to pretend to share power with those plotting to defeat the American project.

Externally, these steps must parallel a plan to use the formidable American armada assembled in the Persian Gulf. As Iranians are arrested and their cells busted, offshore Iranian oil platforms should be bombed progressively.

Similarly, choice targets in Syria’s oil industry — oil wells, refineries, and transportation — should be bombed if Syria does not stop sending jihadists into Iraq. To be sure, Iran and Syria will retaliate, but how is that different from their plotting right now in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq?

If America is not willing to up the ante now, the right thing to do is pull those American fighting men and women out before more of them pay with their lives and limbs — for nothing.