Former Brazilian Foreign Minister warns of “dangerous military rapprochement” between the Lula government and Iran
Last Saturday, January 28th, the Iranian military ships Iris Makran and Iris Dena docked in Rio de Janeiro, using Brazil as their last stopover before the arrival of the frigates at the Panama Canal, considered one of the main strategic points on the planet.
The Iranian navy mission, authorized by the Brazilian Navy high command, has been seen as an affront to the sovereignty of the United States in the region.
According to Brazilian authorities, the ships agreed on the Brazilian coast carrying cruise missiles, antinavian weapons, and torpedoes.
“We are aware of the operation and will continue to monitor all attempts by Iran to establish itself militarily in Western waters,” said the agency’s spokesman, Ned Price.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar told Fox News that the mission would be a way for Iran to strengthen alliances with socialist governments, including Brazil.
“It is not a coincidence that the ships were sent to Rio de Janeiro, one month after a socialist government took back power,” pointed out the Florida representative, affiliated with the Republican party.
For his part, the vice-president of Iran, Mohammad Hosseini, communicated his intention to strengthen “the economic and political ties Brazil-Iran” when he attended Lula’s inauguration ceremony on January 1.
Before this, the vice president of the PT and federal deputy, José Guimarães (the same as the incident of the dollars in his underpants), had already met with Iranian ambassador Hossein Gharibi in November, when the diplomat said that the reason for the meeting was to discuss “the increase of bilateral relations with Brazil” from the PT’s third term.
BRAZIL HAS INCREASED EXPORTS TO IRAN DURING THE BOLSONARO ADMINISTRATION
Foreign Minister of the Bolsonaro government between 2019-2021, diplomat Ernesto Araújo, who currently teaches directly from Hartford, USA, guarantees that Brazil has always had great relations with Iran in the commercial sphere, but always emphasizing that the agreements “have always been economic, never political.”
“Where there is Iran, there is a problem,” Araújo emphasizes in an exclusive interview with BSM.
“In the Bolsonaro government and during my period at the head of Itamaraty, we politically distanced ourselves from Iran while maintaining our level of exports to that country – showing that it is not necessary to flatter tyrannical regimes to do trade,” explains the former foreign minister.
In Ernesto Araújo’s view, relations between the PT and Iran have always been “strange”.
The diplomat recalls that in 2010, during Celso Amorim’s administration in the Foreign Relations portfolio, Brazil closed an agreement with Turkey and Iran, allowing the Middle Eastern country to keep its nuclear program active.
“Nobody seriously can believe that (an agreement like this) is for peaceful purposes,” Ernesto Araújo points out, recalling that Europeans and Americans rejected the treaty.
At that moment,” Araújo reinforces, “Iran had already created a whole scheme of presence in Latin America, involving nuclear cooperation in a triangulation with Kirchner’s Argentina and Chávez’s Venezuela,” he concludes.
The agreement to which Bolsonaro’s former foreign minister refers was signed in May 2010, in the last half of the second Lula administration.
Minister Celso Amorim was emphatic in his 65th UN General Assembly speech: “If the world wants peace, it will have to use the Tehran Declaration.
Rejected by the UN Security Council, the text foresaw sending 1,200 kilos of Iranian uranium to Turkey in exchange for fuel to maintain a nuclear reactor. The United States, Russia, and France would provide the fuel.
“In short, when discussing Iran, you mainly discuss the nuclear program and terrorism. Any rapprochement with this country beyond trade involves these two dimensions,” emphasizes Araújo.
IRAN-SÃO PAULO FORUM UNION
Considered taboo for more than a decade, the role of the São Paulo Forum in the political articulations of the Latin American left has gained strength with the change of command in countries like Chile, Colombia, and Brazil.
The most recent move by the organization created in 1990 took place yesterday (2/2), in Brasilia, with the meeting between Lula and the Foro’s executive secretary, Monica Valente, as reported by BSM.
A dedicated scholar of the maneuvers of the São Paulo Forum, Ernesto Araújo calls attention to the infiltration of Iran in the plans of countries associated with the organization.
“In the management after mine, still in the Bolsonaro government, there were signs of rapprochement with Iran, totally mistaken in my view,” he criticizes.
“With Iran, it’s just to trade, and that’s it; anything beyond that becomes tacit support for Iran’s aggressive policies in the Middle East and its allies in the Foro de São Paulo. It is not surprising now to see the new Lula government building an even closer relationship with the Iranians, including opening our ports to the Iranian navy,” he laments.
In Ernesto Araújo’s analysis, Iran has long played a destabilizing role in the Middle East, fomenting terrorism in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, besides promoting association with members of organized crime and parties of the São Paulo Forum.
“They want to put Brazil back into the same pot that was cooking in the previous PT governments: Bolivarianism, Foro de São Paulo, terrorism, penetration of Shiite Islamic radicals, and strange nuclear programs.”
IRAN: HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Despite the rhetoric in defense of human rights and democracy, the Lula government has been rehearsing a dangerous rapprochement with Iran, a country notorious for practices condemned by the UN (United Nations).
Last December, the country, now presided over by Ebrahim Raisi, was expelled from the main UN commission on women’s rights. The decision was made after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested and killed for not being dressed “correctly” on the streets of the capital Tehran.
In another case of an attack on democracy, film director Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned since July 2022 in Tehran for taking part in protests against the Iranian government in 2010, when the president was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The filmmaker announced a hunger strike over his condition: “Today, like many people imprisoned in Iran, I have no choice but to protest this inhumane behavior with my most cherished possession: my life.”
With information from Brasil Sem Medo
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