Lula's Legacy
Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva: Obama, Hillary Ordered Me Not to
Negotiate with Iran
“I remember that Hilary Clinton worked hard against my idea to go to Iran. She
even called the Emir of Qatar and asked him to convince me not to go. When I
arrived in Moscow and met with [Dmitry] Medvedev, I found out Obama had called
and asked him to help convince me not to go.”
by Alan Macleod
January 24th, 2020
By Alan Macleod @AlanRMacLeod
He was the world’s most popular leader. Now he is “the world’s most prominent
political prisoner” according to American political philosopher Noam Chomsky.
From extremely humble beginnings as a peanut seller and a shoeshine boy on
Brazil’s streets, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva rose to become president of his
nation in 2002. Yet he is now being kept hostage by the country’s fascist
Bolsonaro administration. In a wide-ranging interview with Brasil Wire, editors
Daniel Hunt and Brian Mier and Michael Brooks, host of The Michael Brooks Show,
the man universally known as Lula described how the U.S. government ordered him
not to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, new revelations about U.S.
involvement in the coup of 1964, and the current state of his country.
<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px;
overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>
U.S. tensions with Iran are nearing an all-time high. But ten years ago, the
Brazilian government brokered a deal between Iran and the West – something,
Lula reveals, was met with near incandescent anger by Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton. The former president was at the G20 summit in Princeton, N.J., and
talk of negotiating a peace deal with Iran was in the air. But, as he soon
found out, none of the leaders in the room were interested in speaking with
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “How do these people want to make a deal
without a conversation?” Lula asked, proposing to travel alone in good faith to
Iran as a neutral arbiter from the global South. The U.S. tried to scupper his
plan at every step. As Lula recounted,
“
I remember that Hilary Clinton worked hard against my idea to go to Iran. She
even called the Emir of Qatar and asked him to convince me not to go. When I
arrived in Moscow and met with [Dmitry] Medvedev, I found out Obama had called
and asked him to help convince me not to go.”
The reason Obama did not want him negotiating, it transpired, was that he had
already written and signed a formal letter to Lula promising that if Iran
agreed to certain terms, the U.S. would sign a treaty. Lula went to Tehran
regardless of the objections and had little trouble signing Ahmadinejad up to
terms dictated by Obama. He naively thought the U.S. and the E.U. would
celebrate his diplomacy. In fact, Lula said, he was treated as a “personna non
grata on the international political stage.” “Everyone was acting like Brazil
had gotten into something that nobody had invited it to do,” he added.
In response to Brazil’s efforts at diplomacy, Obama increased sanctions on
Iran, shattering the pretense that the U.S. was acting as an honest partner and
just wanted to secure peace in the region. Nevertheless, his actions, calling
the West’s bluff, eventually led to an Iran deal that made the region a safer
place. “The rich countries… did not accept a new protagonist in the area. In
their minds, Brazil was not big enough to get involved in an issue of that
scale. It was easy for me to speak with Ahmadinejad because I told him that the
only thing I wanted from them is what we have in Brazil,” Lula told his
interviewers.
Lula’s legacy of independence
Brazil had been a loyal client state of the U.S. since the 1964 coup that
overthrew João Goulart and replaced him with a fascist military dictatorship.
In 2018, Lula notes, evidence was released revealing the extent of U.S.
involvement in the coup. Audiotapes showed that President Kennedy personally
gave the orders to overthrow Goulart and that U.S. warships entered Brazilian
waters to assist the military takeover. “It took us 54 years to learn that,”
opined the former president.
As leader of South America’s largest country, Lula reasserted Brazil’s
independence internationally. “I am convinced that the Americans never accepted
the fact that we made a deal with France to build nuclear powered ships,” he
said. “Comrade Obama was not happy when we decided to make a deal to buy
[French] Rafale jets, and that [my successor] Dilma decided to buy Swedish
fighter jets. He wasn’t happy with that. He also wasn’t happy with a certain
level of independence that Brazil had.”
According to Lula, the U.S. was aghast at the wave of countries electing
left-wing heads of state across the region. By 2011, a large majority of Latin
Americans lived under governments formally committed to ending the reign of
American imperialism, from the more radical leftist governments of Venezuela,
Bolivia and Ecuador to the “soft left” of Argentina, Uruguay or Brazil. All the
governments differed in outlook but all saw the necessity in working together
to achieve genuine independence.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Obama
Barack Obama walks past Lula da Silva after speaking at the Summit of the
Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17, 2009. Andres Leighton
| AP
They also began inviting other powers like Russia and China in. “I think the
Americans woke up one morning and said, “hold on a second, Latin America is
ours and we will not allow the Chinese to continue acquiring Latin America,”
Lula said. However, the situation is very different in 2020.
Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached and Lula imprisoned and barred
from standing for office. Others, such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales have been
overthrown in U.S. sponsored coups. The U.S. has also recognized right-wing
opposition politician Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela. Lula took aim at
the “rude” and “mediocre” “foolishness” of the Trump administration: “The idea
that you would officially recognize a con-artist, a congressman who declared
himself President of the Republic – imagine if this fad catches on around the
World!”
Today, Brazil is again controlled by a fascist military officer in Jair
Bolsonaro. Lula was convicted of corruption in a highly dubious court decision,
sent to prison, and barred from standing in the 2018 elections, where polls
show he was the overwhelming favorite for victory. After jailing him, the
judge, Sergio Moro, accepted a place as the Minister of Justice in Bolsonaro’s
cabinet. Even more shockingly, Brazil-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald
exposed that Moro was far from a neutral arbiter and was in fact collaborating
with the prosecution team to ensure Lula’s conviction. As MintPress News
reported this week, Greenwald has now been charged with “cybercrimes” in
retaliation.
“I think that Brazil is living its worst moment in history,” Lula told his
interviewers. “We have a subservient government.” Subservient, that is, to the
United States and to capitalism. He was kept in solitary confinement, and
without access to reading materials, but has been temporarily freed while his
appeal is heard, hence his increased ability to speak out.
Lula grew up dirt poor in Brazil’s extremely impoverished northeast, dropping
out of school by grade five to shine shoes for a living. He was a child laborer
and lost a finger at age 14 in a lathing accident in an auto parts factory. But
he had already begun to organize his much older colleagues, rising to become
one of the country’s top union bosses, a dangerous position to hold in a
fascist dictatorship. After many years of trying, he was elected president of
Brazil in 2002. As the U.S. was declaring war on Iraq, Lula was declaring a war
on hunger in his own country. His signature Bolsa Familia program, which
featured both unconditional and conditional direct cash transfers to the
poorest Brazilians, lifted tens of millions out of poverty. Under Lula and
Dilma, the education budget rose fivefold while health spending quadrupled as
the country constructed an enormous socialized health system with the help of
around 12,000 Cuban doctors.
It was independent, constructive thinking like this that generated such respect
for Lula worldwide and the reason he is still seen as a dangerous subversive by
elites both in Brazil and in the United States. The threat of a good example,
after all, is a powerful one.
Feature photo | U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, center, speaks with
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, during Brazil’s President
Dilma Rousseff’s inauguration ceremony at the Planalto presidential palace in
Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 1, 2011. Eraldo Peres | AP
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in
2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News
and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing
Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The
Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American
Herald Tribune and The Canary.
