BAGHDAD, Iraq — Secretary of State Rice still appears not quite to know whether Iran has an interest in a stable Iraq. On ABC Sunday she said that she would not rule out meeting with Iran’s foreign minister this week because “if indeed everyone at that table believes that a stable Iraq is indeed in their interest, then there are steps that they need to start to take to help stabilize Iraq.”

Technically this week’s ministerial summit in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, is meant to persuade Iraq’s neighbors to support the plan the fragile Iraqi government and American military are following to win back Baghdad and establish a rule of law. But it’s hard to believe that the meeting will also not test the waters for an exit strategy. While General David Petraeus is in Iraq to win the war, Ms. Rice may be in Egypt to negotiate a way for the Iraqi people and America to lose it gracefully.

How else to explain the credulity of such a brilliant woman? At this point, there should be no question that Iran seeks an Iraq that is at war with itself. Consider that Iranian-made explosive formed projectiles are found among both Sunni and Shiite terrorists, according to a press briefing this month from General William Caldwell.

Or notice that the province of Dialla receives all its uninterrupted electricity from Iran. Why has Iran signed defense and intelligence treaties with Syria, the primary facilitator of foreign Sunni car bombers who conduct the mega terror attacks in Baghdad against both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis?

Last week, in interviews in Sulimaniya, the director of security for the province, General Sarkwat Hassan Jalal, said the top threat he faces is that from Sunni Islamists crossing into his territory from Iran. For this seasoned professional, “Iran is at the top of the terrorism in all the world.”

Inside the security directorate, General Jalal’s officers made available a former Kurdish police officer who was recruited to spy in the Kurdish provinces for Iran.

In that interview, Osman Ali Mustapha, described how members of a Sunni Kurdish organization, known to soldiers here as Ansar al-Sunna, were issued political refugee cards by Iran’s Etallat and Revolutionary Guard.

These get-out-of-jail-free cards relieve them from any hassle crossing the border from their outposts along the Iraqi border. Ansar al-Sunna on its Web site has taken to calling itself Al Qaeda in Kurdistan.

Mr. Mustapha said that in April 2005, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Brigadier General Qassam Suleimani held a meeting with the jihadist leaders conveying the wishes of Iran’s supreme leader, that these Sunni terrorists cross the border to attack Americans.

General Petraeus is also familiar with Mr. Suleimani. At a briefing for reporters last week, he said a terror network that kidnapped and executed five American soldiers in Karbala was “provided substantial funding, training on Iranian soil, advanced explosive munitions and technologies as well as run of the mill arms and ammunition, in some cases advice, and in some cases even a degree of direction.” Providing the guns, money, and training was Mr. Suleimani’s Quds Force.

Most Democrats, so eager to proclaim their basis in reality, have no interest in reconciling these facts. For them, any negative behavior from Iran can be explained away as President Bush’s failure to talk nicely to them when he had the chance. Iran, after all, is a Shiite nation, and it would never support Sunni terrorists who kill Shiites. In the same breath that the Democrats seek to betray the Iraqis, they say blame the president for unleashing the civil war.

They mustn’t have noticed what the president’s top diplomat is actually saying. More importantly, they have failed to notice what General Petraeus is not saying. Despite the evidence that Iran’s Quds Force is behind the attacks on five GIs in Karbala, the general would not say whether the foreign operations wing of the Revolutionary Guard, whose commander reports to Iran’s supreme leader, represented a decision taken by the Iranian government to attack American soldiers. As for how high up this policy went, General Petraeus said, “this is such a sensitive issue.”

It is a sensitive issue, hence our brilliant general in Iraq cannot state the obvious, and must pretend that Iran’s supreme leader cannot control the Quds Force commander that reports directly to him.

At the end of the day, the Islamic Republic has no interest in a stable, secure, and democratic Iraq. Its real goal is to make its neighbor a vassal state, the way Syria’s playing of multiple sides of Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s made Beirut subservient to Damascus. Iran hopes to be Iraq’s indispensable cop, in exchange for political and economic control of its rival.

In the meantime, Iran has sent its terror masters to Iraq to kill the one force that is trying to impose the rule of law here — American soldiers. The only deal available from the Iranians now is to pay protection or suffer the consequences.