Looking on the bright side again, although 74 countries retain the death penalty, just 22 of those went to the trouble of executing prisoners last year. ?There is now a global tide against the death penalty, " Amnesty researcher Piers Bannister said. Only the ?hardened" nations now use it. Of these, China is the most hardened, having carried out 80% of all capital punishment last year. After the Chinese, to whose leader George Bush grovelled and begged so pathetically in Washington on Thursday, the hardened include Saudi Arabia, the United States and Iran, who combined to carry out 14% of executions.

In the current world climate, it is interesting to see the US and Iran so closely squeezed together on such a list, and it can truly be said that the Amnesty report allows us a new way to view the stand-off between the two countries over Iran's nuclear ambitions. From this novel vantage point, we can concentrate on the similarities between the two countries rather than the perceived differences.

In one country, we see a regime headed by a religious zealot, one who has made some bizarre pronouncements recently about the elimination of enemy nations and who has used the intemperate nature of his statements to curry favour with his electorate. In the other country, of course, we see a government led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the bewhiskered lunatic who is president of Iran.

In one nation, we have an archconservative, who recently caused a surprise by comprehensively sweeping to victory in an election against a reformist candidate favoured by most of the rest of the world. In the other country, of course, we have George W Bush, the bewildered incompetent who is president of the United States.

It will be no consolation to the drivers amongst you, who may soon face regular petrol prices of 1.25 per litre because of this dispute between the US and Iran, to ponder on the obvious similarites between the leaders of both countries.

Although disputes between similar personalities can often be solved by exploiting the common ground that exists between them, they are often damnably difficult if the individuals involved see the world in such black and white, good versus evil, terms as Bush and Ahmadinejad do.

Where Ahmadinejad speaks of wiping Israel off the map, Bush has described Iran as part of an ?axis of evil". He believes that if you're not with him, you're against him. He is said to despise Ahmadinejad, whom he has never met and with whom he refuses to negotiate or meet. He will not rule out using nuclear weapons to stop Iran gaining nuclear weapons, while Ahmadinejad will not eliminate the possibility that Iran would one day like to acquire them. If Israel has them, if the US has them, if North Korea has them, if Pakistan has them and if India has them, he and other Iranians understandably believe that they should be allowed to have them too.

The situation is a mess, and it needs the involvement of some very clear heads to work it all out. We might wish in this part of the world that the EU would act as just such an independent and sane voice, and that within Europe Ireland might have something sensible to offer on the subject. But the Irish are so onside with US interests currently that we can expect nothing but the usual platitudes from the two Aherns, Bertie and Dermot.

What the situation needs in the first instance is an acknowledgement from the international community that the fault in this dispute is not all on the Iranian side and that the constant American sniping, its consistent support of Israel, and the way it turns a blind eye to the nuclear ambitions of countries, like India, which it regards as friendly, can have only one result: to increase Iranian determination to level the playing field. It also rallies ordinary Iranians around Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man for whom the word hardline could have been invented.

Bush has contributed to the sense of torpor and pessimism that now afflicts many politically imaginative Iranians, " according to Christopher de Bellaigue, an English-born resident of Iran, and the author of a book on the country.

By including Iran in his 'axis of evil' and repeatedly praising prodemocracy activists during periods of unrest, Bush gave conservative judges and their hardline supporters in the press and television a pretext to label all reformists as traitors and lackeys of America." Mohamed Khatami, the former reasonably liberal president has made it clear", says de Bellaigue, ?that he regards George Bush as partly responsible for his failure to reform Iran". A result of Bush's clumsy meddling, of course, was Khatami's loss in the last election to Ahmadinejad.

The proper and only way to resolve this crisis is for direct negotiations to take place between the two sides.

This is still the favoured path forward of Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has recently been very badly treated by the Iranians. Instead of efforts to encourage meaningful talks, however, we have rumour of nuclear attacks by the US on Iran and threats of economic sanctions against the Iranians by some European countries.

In that scenario, de Bellaigue says, Iran would collapse and world oil prices would soar, ?with threatening consequences to many of the world's economies". The two Aherns would probably say something then alright. But it would be far too little, far too late.