Brazil ends role as Iran broker

The Jerusalem Post

Brazil will no longer be involved in mediation regarding the nuclear Iran issue, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told the Financial Times on Monday.

“We got our fingers burned by doing things that everybody said were helpful and in the end we found that some people could not take ‘yes’ for an answer,” Amorim said.

“If we are required [to negotiate again], maybe we can still be useful . . . But we are not going out in a proactive way again unless we are required to,” he added in the quote from the Financial Times.

Amorim argued that Brazilian attempts to broker a deal were drowned out by the UN's call for additional, more strict sanctions on Iran.

“We were directly involved in seeking a solution and we were encouraged to do that,” Amorim said, “and then when we produced a result it had no consequence. On the same day that the agreement was produced, before it had even been analyzed, the immediate response was the request for a [UN] resolution [on sanctions].”

A senior US official deemed Brazil's move appropriate, as he noted that their vote against the UN sanctions on Iran placed the country in a biased position.

“I don’t see Brazil or Turkey really being in a position to act as a mediator,” the official said, “having voted against the sanctions, they are really not neutral.”