The announcement that the US ambassador to Iraq will meet with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad is a textbook case of better late than never. Now that the US and Iran have at last agreed to begin a dialogue that suits the vital interests of both, the pragmatists in both camps must prevent hardliners from sabotaging the enterprise.

Because the Bush administration waited so long to open talks with Iran — a move recommended last year by the Iraq Study Group — the United States position in Iraq has weakened appreciably while Iran’s has been strengthened. Four years ago, Bush spurned a proposal from a reformist government in Iran for a so-called grand bargain on Iraq, Iran’s nuclear programme, its support for Hezbollah, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and United States’ agreement not to pursue regime change in Tehran.

Bush’s blunders in Iraq after his rejection of the May 2003 offer from Iran opened the way first to the Sunni Arab insurgency and to sectarian warfar. These calamities, along with the election in 2005 of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president, the progress of Iran’s nuclear programme, and Bush’s dilatory response to the war last summer between Israel and Hezbollah, tilted the leverage away from Washington and toward Tehran.