If scenes of Saddam Hussein’s chaotic execution serve President Bush’s shaping of a new course in Iraq, a first move must be the removal of Prime Minister al-Maliki. In his brief tenure, Mr. Maliki has confirmed what many of us knew and warned against; namely, that he is an Iranian agent in Baghdad — the leader of a Shiite insurgency composed of various political parties, armed militias, and thugs tasked with creating another bridgehead for a growing Persian hegemony.

Granted, Saddam Hussein was evil. But an unchallenged Iran with nuclear arms, advancing armies of nihilists positioned in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza, heralds Armageddon for the Middle East. Forget the décor of “elected” government, free Parliament, etc. The reality is that Baghdad has fallen under the sway of an Iranian-sponsored mafia now headed by Mr. Maliki. The evidence is far too overwhelming for cosmetic surgery.

Less than three weeks ago, American troops arrested two senior Iranian military officers invited to visit Iraq by Mr. Maliki himself. The two were commanders in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They were caught advising and training Shiite militias on how to make better roadside bombs, which are the no. 1 killer of American troops, and deadlier car bombs, which are the no. 1 killer of Iraqi civilians.

They are neither the first nor the only ones. The record shows that a steady stream of weapons, fighters, and trainers are coming in from Iran. But in the amazing catch-and-release program that Mr. Maliki has urged upon American forces to implement, those caught are let go or delivered back to him for safe passage back to Iran. Until now, the American approach has been to save Mr. Maliki from embarrassment. One wonders why.

Even if we accept that America entered Iraq on “false premises,” we cannot act on the similar false premise that Mr. Maliki is a friend or an Iraqi patriot. He is neither. This is why any new plan for Iraq must include a ramp up of combat troops to eradicate the Shiite militias of Moqtada al-Sadr — whose name Saddam’s executioners were chanting in the gallows — and another Shiite cleric who is another Iranian agent, Abdelaziz Al-Hakim. The Iraqi security forces are so beyond reform at this point, they must be disbanded. Only the Iraqi army, which still preserves enough secular, multiethnic disciplined elements, can run Iraq when we leave. Therefore, the mission in the next few months should be to bring back many of the Baathists who have no civilian blood on their hands into both the army and the government, along with a large infusion of Kurdish Iraqis.

In short, if Iraq is to be saved, the new mission is to reverse much of the amateurish bumbling of the first American pro-consul of Iraq, the unlamented L. Paul Bremer III, whose stewardship in 2003 along with his team of people who knew nothing of the Arab world’s sociology disastrously dismantled the Saddam regime to replace it with nothing — clearing the way for Iran.

A second mission must face the fact that Iraq has been turned from a flawed nation held together by a brutal dictator into what the famed Egyptian scholar and diplomat Tahseen Basheer once dubbed as “tribes with flags.”

His memorable depiction in the late 1970s was meant to describe bickering Bedouin populations of the oil-rich Arab countries, but it applies to most of the Arab world. Indeed, the current government of Iraq is behaving strictly as the “Maliki tribe.”

The situation is made dire by the fact that this tribal ritual will surely migrate. Iraq, a disintegrating country, is becoming a hub for the export of sectarian strife to neighbors positioned so precariously that they need merely a gentle blow to tumble.

As he prepares his new plan, the Mr. Bush may benefit from a selective reading about Gertrude Bell, the British scholar-spy of the early 1900s who practically conceived Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine after World War I.

It is, she would say, not about nation-states but “tribes with flags,” Mr. Bush.