For most of the millions of people who listened to Colin Powell Wednesday, the new news had to do with a Jordanian by the name of Abu Mossab Al Zarqawi, whom the secretary of state identified as a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.

Wounded in the fighting in Afghanistan, Zarqawi made his way to Baghdad for medical treatment, and spent at least two months in Saddam's capital. Anyone who understands the tight security and paranoid surveillance that exists in Baghdad will immediately acknowledge that Zarqawi could not have been treated so well without high-level approval.

But the Zarqawi story is even more important than that. This case helps us understand how the terrorist universe functions, and hence the true dimensions of the war against terrorism. And it is all the more significant because the bulk of the information comes from Germany, hardly an enthusiastic participant in that war.

Last year, the German authorities rolled up a nasty group of Palestinian terrorists known as El Tawhid. Through a combination of lucky breaks (one of the members of the group quickly broke down and provided abundant evidence against the others) and good police work (telephone intercepts, bugs and basic surveillance) the Germans learned a great deal about the group: They were planning a series of terrorist acts, ranging from assassinations to bombings, against a variety of targets (Jews, Americans, even German military installations).

The evidence led directly to the group's supreme leader, the now celebrated Abu Mossab Al Zarqawi. The German investigation showed much more than a link to Iraq, because there were numerous communications between the terrorists in Germany and Zarqawi . . . in Tehran, Iran.

And just as it is impossible to believe that Zarqawi received medical treatment in Iraq without approval at the highest levels of Saddam's regime, it is impossible to believe that Zarqawi maintained operational links to his terrorist followers in Germany from Tehran without approval at the highest levels of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Palestinian terrorist group was thus actively supported by two of the three charter members of the Axis of Evil, which should not surprise us. We have been so obsessed with Iraq, and with al Qaeda, that there is a tendency to lose sight of the ongoing cooperation between the terror countries and the terrorist groups.

We are at war with several countries (above all, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) and many terrorist groups (from Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jama'a Islamiyah etc.), and the lines between them are often very fuzzy. For a man like Zarqawi, it mattered little if he were in Baghdad or Tehran, because each regime offered him safe haven, good communications, and whatever support he required. In like manner, terrorists originally recruited by Al Qaeda are often serviced by cells under the control of Islamic Jihad or Hizbollah.

The best way to understand what we're fighting against is to think of the mafia as portrayed in The Godfather. Under normal circumstances, the mafia families fight among one another for spoils, turf and control of territory. But when the Feds come after them, the heads of the five families sit down and design a war strategy that imposes full cooperation and mutual support.

So it is with the terrorists: They are in war mode, and they give each other all the help they can - and their godfathers in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh provide what is required.

We will learn a lot more about Zarqawi in the near future. The German press will run with this story for many days. We will do well to focus on the broader picture, so that we will wage the war against terrorism as effectively as possible.

In that broader picture, the liberation of Iraq is only a single battle, not the war itself. If we deprive the terrorists of Iraqi support, they will spend more time in the other havens, counting on the assistance of the remaining terror masters.

We're certainly making progress when one of the most reluctant of our allies is the source of such devastating intelligence. I think the Germans were profoundly upset to discover that the Palestinian terrorists--supported by an Iranian regime for which the Germans had long been one of the leading apologists--were targeting good Germans for death.

Now we have to make them pay for targeting us.

Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The War against the Terror Masters.