Why is Israel's Shimon Peres in Brazil and Argentina? Iran.

Whose backyard is Latin America now?

That’s the question that a flurry of leaders seem to be trying to answer on a series of visits to the region this month. Israeli President Shimon Peres began his week-long jaunt to Brazil and Argentina today with the stated purpose to “discuss the Iranian infiltration of the continent, opportunities to strengthen political and strategic ties between the countries, and how to increase economic cooperation.”

He’s right on time. The first state visit by an Israeli president to Brazil in 40 years and to Argentina in 20 comes just weeks before an expected trip by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the end of this month. Brazilian officials also say Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas may visit them this month.

So how did the world’s fifth largest country, better known for samba and soccer stars than nuclear nonproliferation negotiations (to its long-simmering resentment), become a proxy playing field for Israeli-Iranian tête-à-tête?

First, Brazil and Argentina have Latin America’s largest Jewish populations. Second, “Brazil has maintained relations with Iran, even visiting Iran, and that’s been a source of concern not only for Israel but for the United States,” says Chris Sabatini, senior director of policy for the New York-based Council of the Americas. “[Mr. Peres] is trying to reach out to a swing state, if you will.”

Brazil prides itself on an independent foreign policy, leaning neither too close to the US nor to the region’s extreme leftists. For example, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended Iran’s development of a nuclear program for energy purposes in September’s UN gathering in New York. “Brazil has always thought of itself as being a mediator,” Mr. Sabatini adds, “[and] that it’s better to, say, embrace than to isolate.”

The Iranian ambassador to Brazil, amidst the clout of Peres’s visit, spoke up today to defend his host country’s ability to invite whichever world leaders it please: “Today, Brazil is a strong, independent country, and, certainly, this independence does not [allow for] the intervention of other countries,” said Iranian ambassador Mohsen Shaterzadeh, according to the Rio de Janeiro-based daily O Globo.

Brazil has a sizable Shiite Muslim population in the states of Paraná and São Paulo, which is one reason the it maintains open relations with Iran, according to Sabatini.

Argentina: Remembrance of bombings linger
That’s not the Argentine way. It’s taken the opposite tack from Brazil and collaborated more so with the US in isolating Iran.

That’s both because of Buenos Aires’ “large, vocal [and] politically powerful” Jewish population, says Sabatini, and the not-too-distant memories of the 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy there, which killed 29, and the ’94 car bombing that killed 85 at the Israelite Mutual Association. Argentina accuses Iran of masterminding that attack.

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