Lula’s Nods to Iran Sow Brazil’s Growing Confusion With Chavez

When Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defends Iran’s right to a nuclear program and makes plans to visit Tehran in May, he is following the path of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The similarities only go so far.

Chavez, who has visited Iran eight times, is supporting the Islamic Republic and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because he views the Iranian leader as a fellow “gladiator of the anti- imperialist battle” against the U.S.

Lula’s motivation is less ideological than strategic, say analysts in Brazil and the U.S. His policy is aimed at converting Brazil’s economic muscle into global clout by pushing “south-south” trade and political ties with developing countries, they say. Iran’s 74 million consumers make it an attractive market, and Lula’s resistance to Iran sanctions helps safeguard Brazil’s civilian nuclear program from outside interference.

“It’s not about embracing Iran,” said Matias Spektor, a Brazilian foreign policy expert and visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Lula believes that international agreements like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty can’t be used selectively by great powers to punish weaker countries.”

Whatever his motives, Lula’s outreach has raised concern in Washington and in Israel, where he arrived yesterday on a tour that includes a visit to the Palestinian territories and Jordan.

Israeli View

“It is important for us to show that Iran is really trying to get nuclear weapons and not just develop a nuclear program,” Dorit Shavit, deputy Director-General for Latin America at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview. “Until now, unfortunately, Brazil believes that if only we explain to Iran and engage them, they will be convinced.”

Brazil, where exports equaled 9 percent of gross domestic product last year, has seen annual trade with Iran surge 40 percent to $2 billion since Lula took office in 2003. Rio de Janeiro-based Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled company, won in 2003 a bid to explore for oil in Iranian waters of the Persian Gulf. Accompanying Ahmadinejad on his visit to Brazil last year were 200 Iranian business leaders.

Brazil’s 100,000-strong Jewish community staged protests during Ahmadinejad’s November visit. Lula says he has told the Iranian leader he needs to end his anti-Semitic rhetoric.

‘It’s Inconceivable’

“I told President Ahmadinejad that it’s inconceivable to deny the Holocaust,” Lula said in an interview March 9 with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “It’s a fact that is encrusted in the mind of humanity, and the fact that you have differences with Israel shouldn’t lead you to deny or not recognize history.”

Brazil’s real was the fifth best performing currency in the past year among the 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, rising 30 percent against the dollar. Chavez in January devalued the bolivar by 50 percent, although he continues to subsidize the purchase of food, medicine and essential imports from oil profits that comprise half of government spending.

Lula, who was briefly jailed for defying Brazil’s 1964- 1983 dictatorship, has been reluctant to criticize Iran’s clerical and political leaders.

He compared the crushing of street protests in Tehran by police following Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election last year to a fight between fans of rival Rio de Janeiro soccer clubs Flamengo and Vasco da Gama.

Sixth to Visit

Lula will be only the sixth head of state or government to visit Iran since the vote, according to the Iranian president’s Web site. He joins a group that includes Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who first came to power in a 2008 military coup.

“It’s a huge political coup for Iran to invite a Brazilian president, especially when most of the Western world is disputing whether Iran’s government is legitimate or not,” said Mohammed Shakeel, a senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

Lula says Brazil, as a rotating member of the UN Security Council, is determined to prevent a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a U.S.-led coalition went to war based on what turned out to be inaccurate intelligence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions, he says, are counterproductive.

“At this point, sanctions may actually strengthen the most radical leaders in Iran,” Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe, head of political affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview.

Criticism of Powers

Lula’s stance is also a way to criticize nuclear powers, including the U.S. and U.K., for what he says is their failure to comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and disarm.

“It’s a question of equity: you cannot say one country has the right to have a nuclear program and another doesn’t,” Jaguaribe said.

Chavez made a similar point after meeting with Ahmadinejad in Caracas in November. “The U.S. is the country with, I don’t know how many, atomic bombs,” Chavez said in comments broadcast on state television. “They should eliminate their nuclear weapons, it’s a threat to the world.”

Lula sees the push to inspect Iran’s nuclear program as an unwarranted intrusion that could easily be extended to Brazil, which wants to become a major exporter of nuclear power plants, said Spektor, an international relations professor at Rio de Janeiro’s Getulio Vargas Foundation.

When the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency censured Iran in November for blocking inspection of its nuclear program, Brazil was one of six IAEA governing board members to abstain.

Junta’s Program

Brazil’s military junta covertly pursued a nuclear weapons program, though the effort was abandoned with the restoration of democracy. Lula often points to Brazil’s 1988 constitution as the only one in the world to ban nuclear weapons.

Still, Brazil is one of only six signatories to the non- proliferation treaty with active nuclear power programs that refuse to sign an additional protocol allowing closer monitoring. In 2004, it barred the IAEA from access to its Resende uranium enrichment facility, arguing it wanted to protect its technological achievements.

The U.S. says it won’t shut the door on Brazil and its president over Iran.

“If he goes to Iran and tries to convince Iran to be more constructive on the nuclear front, that’s fine with us,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a phone interview. “If he fails to get a meaningful response from Ahmadinejad, that should teach him something.”

Lula’s overtures to Iran differ from Chavez’s in that they are aimed at showing Brazil’s ability to tackle one of the world’s toughest diplomatic issues, helping make the case for a permanent seat on the Security Council, said Karen Hooper, a Latin America analyst at Stratfor, a political risk consultant based in Austin, Texas.

“Chavez is reaching out for whatever allies he can get in opposition to the U.S.,” Hooper said in an interview. “Lula is going to Israel. Brazil is trying to be friends to all.”