UN Should Weigh In on Iran

Brazil's top diplomat said he has asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to consider weighing in on the legality of a possible preemptive strike on Iran.

"No doubt adding an additional flashpoint of military action in a volatile region will greatly exacerbate tensions," Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota told Yahoo News in an interview in New York Tuesday. The international community should proceed "with the utmost caution." "There is a role for him in this," Patriota said he had proposed to the UN chief. "One sometimes hears the expression, 'all options are on the table.' But some actions are contrary to international law."

Patriota's comments come as the United States, United Kingdom and Russia have asked Israel both privately and publicly not to carry out a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Patriota has played a key role as architect of Brazil's foreign policy amid the country's rapid rise into a major global power. Last month, Brazil surpassed the United Kingdom as the sixth largest economy in the world. In another sign of the dizzying pace of the country's rise on the global scene, Brazil has roughly doubled the number of its embassies and consulates around the world in just the past ten years.

Earlier this month, Brazil joined Washington and 11 other nations at the UN Security Council in voting in favor of a resolution that would have condemned Syria's Bashar al-Assad for his brutal crackdown. But Russia and China vetoed the measure, putting into disarray diplomatic efforts to try to stem the spiraling violence in Syria where more than 6,000 people have been killed in the eleven month uprising.

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