Brazil's refusal to join Iran sanctions regime means only one thing

Brazil's continued refusal to join Western efforts to deny nuclear weapons to Iran can lead to only one conclusion -- Brasilia is more interested in keeping open its own options to build atomic weaponry than in international peace and security. Does anyone really think that the world will be a safer place if Iran and its crazy leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, have nuclear weapons? Of course not, yet Brazil turned down U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's latest offer to the country to join the multination effort to sanction Iran today in Brasilia, according to the Washington Post newspaper. Western nations meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna denounced the recent Iranian decision to enrich its uranium to nearly 20 percent, well beyond the 5 percent needed for nuclear reactors, the Post said. "Iran seems determined to defy, obfuscate and stymie," said Ambassador Glyn Davies, who leads the U.S. delegation to the UN nuclear watchdog agency. Iran says it has no designs on nuclear weapons but needs higher-grade uranium for its medical isotope reactor, a claim dismissed as untrue by Western leaders. Of course, anybody hoping that Brazil, the world's eighth-largest country, would soon be taking its place among the world's most-responsible powers, must be sorely disappointed. Instead of signing up for the world effort, Brazil's leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, told a news conference it would not be wise "to push Iran into a corner" on the nuclear issue after his meeting with Clinton. The nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security released an analysis Wednesday that said a stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium could be made into a bomb's worth of weapons-grade fuel in about a month, the Post said.