The day after I arrive in a cold and wet Tehran, Tony Blair says that Iran could be asked to use its influence to help stabilise the situation in Iraq - but only if it adheres to a number of preconditions, such as ending uranium enrichment. The Prime Minister's speech receives considerable media attention in the west. Not so in Tehran. There was very little mention of it in the large number of state and independent newspapers. I called the British embassy in Tehran and was told that no one in the Iranian government or media had been in touch with them about Blair's comments.

As even Blair admitted, he was only repeating something he'd said earlier in the year. But in Tehran it has received very little attention for different reasons. The Prime Minister's comments about the role Iran could be invited to play in Iraq have been widely viewed here as being for western political consumption. The notion that it is for Britain and the United States to invite Iran to play any kind of role is viewed by many commentators here as being completely fanciful. The consensus in Tehran is that London and Washington are in no position to negotiate or set preconditions on this issue, and that it is the Iranian government, not the UK and US, which has a variety of strategic options in Iraq. The sudden hosting of high-level talks in Tehran this weekend between the Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian governments is a potent demonstration of this.

The man widely described as being the most powerful figure in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual head of Iraq's majority Shia population, is himself Iranian. The vast majority of political exiles who returned to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein went home from Iran, not London or Washington. Yet despite the unrealistic, and at times condescending, language used by both Blair and George W Bush, there are many Iranians who feel that their government should play a role in quelling the violent instability in Iraq. Such views are broadly split along Iranian society's class lines.

A number of middle-class businessmen and students I spoke to said that Iran itself had much to lose by the continuing situation in Iraq. "We are Iraq's neighbour, not you in the UK, and the violence can easily spread over the border to our country," said Bijan, a university student. Ziba, a secretary, said that since the Iranian government was constantly stressing its credentials as representing an Islamic republic, it had a moral and religious duty to help Muslims in such a dire plight as the Iraqis.

But travel to the more socially conservative working-class districts of south Tehran, and you get a very different picture. The vast majority of the half-million Iranians who died in the war with Iraq in the 1980s were from this stratum of society, and it is they who voted in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. There is a visceral contempt for Blair and Bush as they seek Iranian help in Iraq. "We shouldn't help them," said Ali, a labourer. "Where were they when we wanted their help in our fight against Saddam? "

But it's my belief that the majority of Iranians, including the political leadership, are willing to play a stabilising role in Iraq. Without doubt, Tehran has the political influence to do so. But what no one here is willing to contemplate is a scenario whereby Iran provides assistance in Iraq, but in return both the UK and US continue to pursue sanctions against Iran, freeze Iranian assets, discourage international investment in the country and implicitly threaten it with bombardment. It is not Iran that faces a choice, as Blair seems to believe. It is us.

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