Jair Bolsonaro, the frontrunner for the Brazilian presidential election, is warning against Iranian interference in the upcoming runoff election.
Fox News national security and foreign policy expert Walid Phares tweeted last week that the State Department and democracy agencies are paying close attention to the Brazilian presidential elections while the intelligence community is monitoring Iran and Venezuela for “nefarious activities inside Brazil, especially since the assassination attempt” on Bolsonaro at a rally in September.
When asked about Phares’s tweets in an interview with a Brazilian news outlet, Bolsonaro said he is aware of “Iran’s interference and passed the information along to the authorities,” adding “[t]here is a lot of geopolitical interest in Brazilian elections.”
In the past, Bolsonaro pushed for legislation that would require the machines to print voting receipts — an idea endorsed by experts who say voting machines not connected to the internet can still be hacked.
Throughout his campaign, Bolsonaro has warned against Brazil — the world’s fifth largest country — taking “the path” of socialist Venezuela, which is currently facing an economic and hunger crisis.
Last week, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo — who is also an elected official but often acts as a surrogate for his father — said that if he father won, Brazil should sever ties with Venezuela and distance itself from Iran.
“You need to play tough with Venezuela. It’ll be a 180 degree-change in relation to Venezuela,” Eduardo said in an interview with Brasilia. “I wouldn’t recognize the Venezuelan government.”
Of Iran, Eduardo said: “Pro-Iranian position? It’ll change.”
Eduardo reportedly gave the interview in his office with displays of pro-gun and pro-life slogans and miniature statues of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
Bolsonaro is a 63-year-old congressman, a retired captain in the Brazilian Army, and a self-described conservative Catholic who is married to an evangelical Christian. Bolsonaro is extremely popular in Brazil in large part for his strong opposition to socialism and promise to curb crime in a country that suffered 63,880 murders in 2017.
The pro-America candidate has spoken positively of President Donald Trump and received the nicknames “Trump of Brazil” and “Trump of the tropics.”
Bolsonaro placed first in the first election on October 7, with 46% of the vote, just short of the 50% required to prevent a run-off.
The financial sector is enthusiastic about the effect Bolsonaro would have on Brazil’s economy due to his support for capitalism and his delegation of economic matters to his trusted advisor, Paulo Guedes, an economist that graduated from the University of Chicago. According to The New Yorker, after Bolsonaro finished in first place during the first election, the stock market jumped 6%.
Bolsonaro will face Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party on October 28, who received 29% of the vote. Haddad was the replacement for Luiz Inacio Lula De Silva — the former president who is serving a 12-year jail term for corruption — after the electoral ruled De Silva could not run for the presidency from prison.
Currently, Bolsonaro is leading the polls by as much as 21 points.