The bottom line in the sectarian conflict of Iraq is that America has no horse in this race. When the Iraqis, Iranian, Saudis, and Americans all meet next week to talk as they are scheduled to, America should make clear that its only stake is an Iraq free of jihadis.

From the start, the American project in Iraq was to create a functional, civilized society with some rule of law.

At the moment, those driving the bloodletting in Iraq are fanatical preachers from both the Sunni and Shiite clergy, but as with all clergy in the Mideast, they answer to orders from above by the leaders of Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia, who ran the region for decades. What divides these particular Muslims is not the faith but a power grab.

Muslims think of themselves first in terms of tribes, clans, and families. Any Middle East scholar will tell you that for a few centuries now, ordinary Muslims have not been agitating for intra-Muslim conflicts over the fine points of Shiite or Sunni jurisprudence, as was the case between Catholics and Protestants. Muslims fought one another and their rulers over power, not jurisprudence.

Indeed, as you read this, Sunni Muslims are fighting to bring down governments of their “same” Sunni persuasion in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria, to mention only three major Arab countries. Osama bin Laden, the best-known Sunni jihadist, wants to bring down the Saudi royal family, the foremost conservative Sunni government on earth.

To this day mixed marriages are numbered in the millions in Iraq. Many of the 60% Shiites of Iraq are intermarried with the country’s 40% Sunnis, and they have done so for 100 years or more without sectarian hangups.

On a broader level in the Arab world, a Muslim, whenever asked, will identify with Islam, not one sect. A Muslim will not answer that he or she is Sunni or Shiite. The answer is: “I am Muslim.”

The sectarian divide is a politicized intrusion. “This is coming from the top down, not the other way around,” reports a Sunni friend, a man ranked as one of Kuwait’s top technocrats, who has played a big role mediating conflicts among Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and America dating back to the earliest gulf wars. In all these talks he never detected a sectarian impulse, he said: “It was always about politics.”

The two strange bedfellows, Sunni/Alawite Syria and Shiite Iran, are a perfect illustration of the political nature of sectarianism.

Both are backing a Shiite Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and a Sunni Hamas organization in the Palestinian Arab territories, regardless of religious affiliations. Their objective is to create an anti-American anti-Israeli front, not a Shiite or Sunni one. In this alliance, as with others, the sectarian divide between Iran and Syria does not count at all, nor does it for the Palestinian Arabs and Hezbollah they support.

The other certainty for American policy experts to stay focused on as we enter talks is that clergies in the Middle East are creatures of their governments and the ruling dynasties. They will do what they are told.

When, some time ago, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia warned their populations that the “Shiites are coming,” they were really saying, “The Iranians are at the gates of the Arab world and we need to stop them.”

Shiites only represent 15% of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. They do not have armies of preachers running around converting Sunnis into Shiites. Similarly, Iran’s appeal to the Shiites of the world to “unite” is self-serving. Suggestions that they can overwhelm the other 85% who are Sunnis are absurd.

Iran’s strategic goal is to spread its political mantle to the majority in Iraq as well as in Lebanon and onto Gaza’s Palestinian Arabs. Saudi Arabia is pushing suicide bombers into Iraq and assembling Palestinians for talks in Mecca not to protect Islam’s unity but to block the Iranian monster. All the parties will keep pushing religious agendas to achieve political purposes.

Of course, the downside of these cynical manipulations is that if they are practiced long enough, they will push the fire below to spread.

Either way, America must keep its eye on the ball when negotiating with these parties, staying focused on the goal in Iraq — not any particular sect.