I wonder if he’s surprised that the two countries have recently inked a deal to have the Iranian government train the new Iraqi Army and to send grain to Iraq, whose children have been starving under thirteen years of tough U.N. sanctions followed by two years of American occupation. I wonder if Bush is surprised that Jaafari will be talking to Iran’s new fundamentalist President about linking the two country’s electric grids and constructing a new oil pipeline to the Iranian port of Abadan.

Surely Bush can’t be surprised. He must know that Jaafari, along with much of Iraq’s current, elected political leadership took refuge in Iran for much of the 1980s – during a time that the United States, under President Ronald Reagan supported Saddam. He must also know that at the same time Iran’s new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was helping to organize his country’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, Ibrahim al-Jaafari was trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein and put an Shi’ite Islamic state in its place.

I think George Bush (or at least his advisers) are aware of these historical facts, This is why his Administration resisted calls to hold elections for almost two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Rather than organize a poll early on, the Administration hired a company out of North Carolina called Research Triangle Institute charged with appointing local governments throughout the country.

Now, though, the Iraqi government is going out on its own – proving that their interests are different from American ones.

What’s next for the Bush Administration? Are Iraq and Iran a new axis of evil?

Aaron Glantz is a correspondent for Free Speech Radio News.