Audience to Ahmadinejad

Yesterday, the Brazilian chancellor, Celso Amorin, finished his visit to Tehran where he was received by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He took a brief tour of some of the controversial nuclear centers, which are allegedly used for peaceful purposes, but it is suspected that they are in fact intended for bomb production. The head of Brazilian diplomacy has also traveled to Russia before, a country which recently accepted the U.S position on the adoption of a new round of U.N. sanctions against Iran for its recurring violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it is a signatory.

The violations consist of the Iranian refusal to give inspectors of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its facilities, nuclear materials, equipment and also to the scientists involved in the program as required by the NPT. The refusal is never exhaustive, of course. It is always manifested by silence or by fraud. Last year, for example, when the United States revealed the discovery of a clandestine center for the production of enriched uranium in the mountains near to the holy city of Qom, Tehran claimed that its existence was about to be communicated to the IAEA.

On the other side of things, Amorim was in Ankara, in Turkey, whose government, like Brazil, opposes sanctions, preferring that the international community insist on diplomatic understanding with the Islamic Republic. Both countries are temporary members of the U.N. Security Council, where the matter will be decided. They argue that sanctions will be useless, as were the three previous series, or counterproductive: if it hurts the Iranian economy with direct effects on people’s lives, it will lead Tehran to harden their position and have broad domestic support behind it.

In practical terms, Brazil and Turkey propose giving another chance to the scheme in which Iran would send about three-quarters of its enriched uranium at 3 percent to France and Russia in order to get it back later at 20 percent for the production of radioactive isotopes for medical purposes. The idea came to be accepted in October by Iranian negotiators at the IAEA. In January, hinting that he feared that the material would simply be confiscated, Ahmadinejad said Iran would only do business if the exchange were simultaneous, confounding the intent to reduce the stockpile of Iranian uranium enrichment for military purposes.

On behalf of the Brazilian position, Amorim recalled that the Turks are “NATO members and neighbors of Iran who are probably the last to want an Iranian bomb;” the same thing he mentioned in an interview published on Sunday by Estadao. The argument ignores the historical links between these two countries. In the case of Brazil, nothing remotely like that exists. Another difference is attitude. Turkey supports dialogue with Tehran, but it is the traditional U.S. ally. More importantly, its president, Abdullah Gül, neither courts nor fraternizes with Ahmadinejad, contrary to President Lula and much to the amazement of the international observers.

“They call us naïve,” protests the chancellor. It would be interesting to know which adjective he would apply to Lula in hearing him say that, on his visit to Iran, he will ask Ahmadinejad face-to-face if he intends to make the bomb. Amorim sounds reasonable when he says that “it is possible to reach an agreement that gives both sides relative comfort, because there is no absolute certainty that Iran will not have a minimum nuclear arsenal in medium term; at the same time it is necessary to respect Iran’s right to have nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” The only drawback of his reasoning is that Iran has never sought such an agreement, even after President Barack Obama extended his hand. Lula will not be the one to turn the tide.

Brazilian diplomacy staggers in its simplicity: contrary to its ambitions for a permanent seat on the Security Council, the country doesn’t participate in debates about the nature of any sanction while preaching dialogue, as does China, for example. The worst thing is to be “the only Western democracy,” points out Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva, “which has given audience to Ahmadinejad.”