Blair should now step back from Bush.
If there are any lessons to be learned from the sudden U-turn in Iranian policy that Ahmadinejad signalled yesterday, it is surely that Bush is, as he so often seems to be, on the total wrong track when it comes to how to approach the Iranians.
Blair began his dealings with Iran in a very neo-con style, racing to the UN and the EU in an attempt to pile the international pressure upon Iran, but all he got for his trouble was the Iranian promise to release Faye Turney instantly rescinded.
The Iranians want respect, and they are highly aware that the US, Israel and Britain have set out to portray them as a nuclear threat, despite the fact that in over 2,200 hours of inspections the IAEA has found absolutely no evidence of a weaponisation programme in Iran and, indeed, Ayatollah Khamenei has expressly forbidden such a programme as anti-Islamic.
Indeed, Iran have offered not only to meet with the US and negotiate, an offer which Dick Cheney's office instantly rejected, but they have even offered full recognition of Israel.
Bush's arrogant insistence that Iran should stop nuclear enrichment before any such negotiations can take place ignores the fact that Iran is allowed to carry out such a process under the nuclear non proliferation treaty. So the US is seeking to portray a legal act as illegal and are further insisting that the Iranians agree to this bampot reading of the NNPT as a precondition for negotiations taking place.
It is a stance that is guaranteed to achieve nothing, very similar to the insane stance Bush adopted towards North Korea.
The fact of the matter is that Bush and his cohorts want war with Iran and are simply using the nuclear argument as a way of propagating that war.
If they were seriously simply looking for a way to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb, then surely the IAEA employing inspectors in Iran is the best way to achieve that. And the best way to get the inspectors in is to start negotiating.
However, Ahmadinejad is more useful to the Bushites as someone they can pretend is somehow preventing their wonderful success in Iraq, and it is certain that the Likud's in Israel would be enraged were Bush to appear to be letting Iran off the hook by offering anything as civilised as negotiations.
So we should be clear who is the warmonger and who is the peacemaker here. The rabid neo-con hordes, fresh from their disaster in Iraq and their quagmire in Afghanistan, are salivating at the thought of yet another military adventure.
However, Blair, having just engaged in a bout of successful diplomacy with Iran, should disengage himself from any further US hostility. He should now insist that the way forward with Iran is not missile strikes, but sitting round a table.
It's not what Bush and the American rabid right want to hear, but listening to those nutcases has done enough harm to everyone.
Blair no longer has any excuse. For the first time in years he refused to go down the US route and he engaged in the very diplomacy that is such an anathema to the Bushites. In the end, after twelve protracted days, he got his men home without a single shot being fired.
If we really want to ensure that Iran never gets the bomb, if that worry is seriously something more than a convenient excuse to rearrange the Middle East in Israel's favour, then the way to do so - as Bush's favourite politician, Winston Churchill, once said - is, "Jaw Jaw, not War War."
But no matter what Bush and his slightly deranged cronies suggest next, if it's anything other than negotiation, Britain should have nothing to do with it.
I know Blair's biggest fear is that the US should never be seen as isolated, but all that stance has resulted in so far is the UK giving the fig leaf of multilaterism to what is, essentially, a US unilateralist policy.
If Bush wants to go it alone, Blair should let him. It's time to wash our hands of Bush's failed policies.
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