I don't know what Tony Blair is smoking.

"Constructive engagement" with Iran? A country that has vowed to incinerate Israel, which is busily manufacturing nukes, and which now wants to take over al Qaeda?

....[T]he revelation that Iran is working hard to establish a closer relationship with bin Laden's fanatics, who provoked the war against terrorism with the attacks on September 11 2001, is likely to undermine severely Downing Street's attempts to effect a rapprochement. Iran is also suspected of arming insurgent groups in southern Iraq - many of which have links to al-Qa'eda - that have been responsible for many of the roadside bomb attacks against British troops.

But intelligence officials have been most alarmed by reports from Iran that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to persuade al-Qa'eda to promote a pro-Iranian activist to a senior position within its leadership.

The Iranians want Saif al-Adel, a 46-year-old former colonel in Egypt's special forces, to be the organisation's number three.

Al-Adel was formerly bin Laden's head of security, and was named on the FBI's 22 most wanted list after September 11 for his alleged involvement in terror attacks against US targets in Somalia and Africa in the 1990s. He has been living in a Revolutionary Guard guest house in Teheran since fleeing from Afghanistan in late 2001.

Alarm over al-Qa'eda deepened yesterday with a Foreign Office warning that the group was determined to acquire the technology to carry out a nuclear attack on the West.

A senior Foreign Office official said that the terrorists were trawling the world for the materials and know-how to mount an attack using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The official said: "We know that the aspiration is there, we know attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technologies are there."

In last night's speech, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to see constructive engagement with the whole of the Middle East.

"A major part of the answer to Iraq lies not in Iraq itself but outside it, in the whole of the region where the same forces are at work and where the roots of this global terrorism are to be found," he added.

"That is what I call a "whole Middle East" strategy.

I hope he's not thinking that Bush and the United States are powerless in the face of dire threats like Iran, but this worries me:

Mr Blair's hopes of a dialogue with Teheran were dealt a further blow last night when President George W Bush rejected the notion that talks with Iran were the key to undermining the Iraq insurgency.

He insisted that Iran should pay the consequences for continuing work on its nuclear enrichment programme.

"It's very important for the"threat to our world security". Last night he was more measured on Iran.

"To be fair, they have a genuine, if entirely misplaced fear, that the US seeks a military solution in Iran. They don't," Mr Blair said.

The fact is, al Qaeda declared war on the United States. Any country allied with al Qaeda is by definition an enemy. Saying "war is not the answer" presupposes that we are not at war when we are. Iran has no interest in peace; even the way the mullahs use the term reminds me of the way the Communists used it. (Peace = submission to their demented view of utopia.)

Maybe "constructive engagement" could be redefined.

But hell, I already proposed sending Ahmadinejad a necktie.

What more can I do?