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| Iranian Adviser Accuses Brazil of Ruining Relations | ||||
| 2012-01-24 | ||||
| RIO DE JANEIRO — Iran’s efforts to cultivate political support in Latin America at a time of rising international tension over its nuclear program appear to have encountered a significant obstacle: Brazil, the region’s economic powerhouse. After President Mahmoud “The Brazilian president has been striking against everything that Lula accomplished,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, who has worked as Mr. Ahmadinejad’s top media adviser, said in an interview published Monday by Folha de São Paulo, a leading Brazilian newspaper, in which he compared Ms. Rousseff to her predecessor and political mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Mr. da Silva, who left office a year ago, visited Tehran in 2010, wading into Middle East diplomacy in an attempt to defuse the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. Together with Turkey’s government, he forged a fuel-swap deal for Iran to ship low-enriched uranium abroad.
In recent months, however, trade ties between the two nations have frayed somewhat. BrazilÂ’s exports to Iran climbed to $2.1 billion in 2010 from $1.2 billion a year earlier. But now some Brazilian companies have complained that it has become harder to obtain Iranian import licenses, curbing what had been an otherwise dynamic market for Brazil.
The views of Mr. Javanfekr, an influential if polarizing political figure in Iran, present a dilemma for Brazil as it attempts to hew to a pragmatic foreign policy that maintains access to important markets while avoiding confrontation. Nevertheless, last year, after the election of Ms. Rousseff, Mr. da SilvaÂ’s chosen successor, Brazil supported a move by the United Nations to investigate claims of human rights abuses in Iran, an initiative led by Washington. The decision was viewed as a subtle shift from Mr. da SilvaÂ’s previous relations with Tehran.
How closely Mr. JavanfekrÂ’s remarks adhere to the views of the Iranian political establishment is a matter of debate. Though he wields influence in the Iranian presidentÂ’s circle of top advisers, having served as the head of the official Islamic Republic News Agency and IranÂ’s official daily newspaper, Mr. Javanfekr has also come under scrutiny amid a rivalry within IranÂ’s leadership. A Tehran court recently gave Mr. Javanfekr a one-year jail sentence for insulting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, IranÂ’s supreme leader, exposing the friction between Mr. Ahmadinejad and conservatives in government. In his swing through Latin America this month, Mr. Ahmadinejad visited just four nations, all with tense ties with Washington but limited regional influence: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. The itinerary did not include the regionÂ’s largest countries: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia or Argentina.
However, IranÂ’s ambassador in BrasÃlia, Mohsen Shaterzadeh, surprised reporters on Saturday by telling them that Mr. Ahmadinejad was still planning to visit Brazil sometime this year. He did not mention a date. Mr. da Silva Nunes, the spokesman for BrazilÂ’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said Monday that no formal request for a visit had yet been made. | ||||
| Posted by:Fat Bob Unotch3711 |
| #2 |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-01-24 23:06 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2012-01-24 09:41 |