hard to believe. Iranian warships are invited to dock at the port of Rio de Janeiro. Simply unacceptable, for many reasons.
But here is one reason: it has only been two months since Brazil was saved from the threat of returning to tyranny; A 77-year-old man, who spent a large part of his life in the struggle against oppressive regimes, came back to lead it; The generals who ruled for 20 years threw many of his friends into prison, and tortured them. And here Lola da Silva’s Brazil feels the need to shine a light on one of the darkest regimes, and in the midst of a wave of savage repression in Iran, whose main target is young women.
● Can Russia ever be a “normal” country? | Yoav Karni, commentary
What could bring Lula, the longtime radical socialist who inspired millions, to embrace the Ayatollahs? We know why Vladimir Putin seeks their proximity; Why is China eager to add them to its anti-American axis; But why Lola? And only a few days after he visited Washington, at the invitation of Joe Biden, to talk, among other things, about strengthening democratic institutions. Are only Brazilians entitled to international protection of their democratic institutions?
Lola’s flirtation with the Ayatollahs is multi-year. He went to Iran in the last days of his previous presidency, in 2010, and made an attempt to “mediate” between it and the US. Photographs show him giving a speech at the Majlis in Tehran, between two huge portraits of Khomeini and Khamenei. Another photograph shows him bowing before an Iranian flag. In Jerusalem, however, Lula refused to lay a wreath on Herzl’s grave.
There is no need to assume that Lola has an ideological sympathy for the Ayatollah regime. There is no side of similarity between his vision and theirs. What is the snake peak? Lola is a Latin American leftist, whose constant teasing of the US and periodic opposition to its interests are part of his genetic code.
Home base for Hezbollah
In the last generation, Iran played a strange role in the Latin American left. Lola was not the only one who made friends with her. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was its express ally, guest and host of its leaders and officers, who gave Hezbollah a home base in Caracas. News spread that Hezbollah had developed a business of smuggling hard drugs through Venezuela. Argentina got involved more than a quarter of a century ago in the case of denying and ignoring Iran’s responsibility for the bombing of the Jewish community center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. 29 were killed.
But while previous displays of affection for Iran were gestures of teasing, the docking of the Iranian warships in the port of Rio came at a critical moment in international relations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put considerable pressure on the world outside of Europe and North America to take a stand. Although the voting schedule at the UN General Assembly shows overwhelming support for condemning Russia, the rhetoric and actions call this impression into question.
Ukraine relies on unprecedented support from almost all Western countries. But outside the West, her plight evokes no more than polite sympathy. It gives an opportunity to the ‘Global South’ (what we once called the ‘Third World’) to remind how far it is from Western democracies.
“The Voice of War and Reaction”
The ‘Third World’ was organized in the movement of ‘non-aligned’ countries from the mid-1950s onwards. Non-identification only concerned official membership in military alliances. Besides, almost all the non-identifiers were pro-Soviet, or pro-Chinese, and anti-American. Their hostility to the USA was defined by labels of anti-colonialism, and later anti-neo-colonialism. Their sympathy for the Soviet Union was dressed up in progressive disguises: the “camp of peace” and “scientific socialism”. By the way, elite advisers of secret police from the Soviet Union, East Germany and Cuba were welcome guests.The Cuban army offered its services to regimes that pledged allegiance to Marxism-Leninism (Angola, Ethiopia).
But their sympathy for post-Soviet Russia rips off the mask. No one can attribute to the Putin state the characteristics of the Soviet Union, even in appearance. Putin’s Russia is nationalist, religious, militaristic, capitalist and corrupt to the core. There is not even a faint echo of the “Voice of Peace and Progress”, the name of the pompous and false Soviet radio station that broadcast to all corners of the world. Now, the name “The Voice of War and Reaction” was worthy of such a station, without hesitation. Nevertheless, some of the great and small priests of the radical left find a reason to support it (also by the way in the radical right, to teach you something about the pathology of politics).
While Brazil’s socialist president is opening his ports to the Iranian navy, South Africa’s leftist government is conducting war maneuvers with the fleets of Russia and China. The deep resentment of Nelson Mandela’s heirs to the West (and Israel as well) is certainly understandable in view of the West’s position towards the apartheid regime. But why should Ukraine pay the price? What do the victims of apartheid find in the bosom of totalitarian tyrants, who oppress their subjects and plot against their neighbors?
India, under the control of a rigid nationalist religious right, compares an ideological and moral garnet to its evasion of Russia’s condemnation. Its foreign minister declared that Europe must get rid of “the state of mind that sees Europe’s problems as the world’s problems, but does not see the world’s problems as Europe’s problems.” It seems that Russia’s attempt to erase Ukraine from the map is a “European problem”.
There is reason to fear a global conflict between democracies and dictatorships in which most of the non-Western world will shrug its shoulders, compare in your mind the current world map in 1940. Independent India and South Africa refuse to support Britain against Hitler, because Nazi expansion is a “European problem”. Maybe that war would have ended differently.