Stephen Turner’s convenient beliefs run at full multipolar speed right now in the Planalto Palace, the Itamaraty Foreign Ministry, the Petrobras boardrooms, and the back-channels with Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and the BRICS partners. The U.S.-Israeli campaign has entered its second month. Ali Khamenei (1939-2026) is dead, Iranian nuclear sites lie cratered, and oil sits in the $90s after a brief spike to $110. These beliefs let President Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, b. 1945), or his ideological heir, hold the coalition together, justify the Global South and BRICS alignment, keep discounted Russian and Iranian oil moving while Brazil exports its own commodities, and present the country as the principled voice of a multipolar world. None of them asks anyone to admit that a long war might spike domestic inflation, strain the real, and exhaust public patience for the old anti-imperialist script.
A convenient belief survives on its payoff. Each one below earns its keep for the men who hold it.
Here are the ten in circulation among Brazil’s leadership today.
The U.S.-Israeli campaign is Yankee imperialism, and it shows why Brazil’s independent, multipolar foreign policy is the only adult position in a world gone mad. This reads every new strike as aggression by the hegemon rather than response, and it feeds the line that BRICS is the future.
The oil-price spike is a windfall. It lifts commodity exports, eases the fiscal deficit, and cushions the economy while Brazil finishes its move away from dollar dependence. The Finance Ministry treats higher prices as manna while the public statements decry the instability Washington caused.
The weakening of Iran strengthens the multipolar order. It removes a flashpoint and opens new room for Brazilian trade, diplomacy, and influence across the Global South. It turns an Iranian setback into evidence that the unipolar moment is dying.
Refusing to join the U.S.-led coalition shows true sovereignty. The campaign confirms that only countries with moral clarity and BRICS solidarity can navigate this chaos without being dragged in. It positions Brazil as the indispensable leader of the non-aligned Global South.
Domestic support for pragmatic, left-wing governance holds firm. The external crisis has unified the country behind Brazil First realism and silenced the usual right-wing warmongers. Grumbling about inflation, fuel prices, or the Amazon gets dismissed as marginal noise from foreign agents or the old elite.
The friendship and investment of China and Russia guarantee that Brazil cannot be isolated or pressured the way smaller, dependent states can. It frames the war as confirmation that the all-weather partnerships hold.
American hunger for Brazilian soy, iron ore, lithium, and beef guarantees that Washington will never push too hard with its human-rights and environmental lectures. It explains why trade and investment continue under the friction.
The humanitarian fallout from Iran underlines why Brazil, with its long experience managing inequality and regional crisis, is the natural moral and diplomatic leader of the Global South. It turns each new crisis into fresh ground for international praise and South-South cooperation.
Strategic patience and masterful non-alignment will win out again. History shows Brazil gains whenever bigger powers spend themselves in distant wars. It gatekeeps the diplomatic line against internal voices who want a more hawkish or pro-U.S. posture.
Brazil’s continental size, resource wealth, demographic vitality, and moral clarity will carry it out of this chapter stronger and more influential. The century belongs to the Global South and to those who reject Yankee hegemony. The meta-belief beneath the rest. It lets the leadership rest easy, in the Planalto or on the flight to Beijing, sure that every added week of war moves Brazil toward its promised role as the indispensable voice of the multipolar world.
These are not conspiracy theories. They are survival tools for a governing class whose political life, economic model, and national self-image depend on never sounding panicked, never sounding too dependent, never sounding too close to Washington. Iranian missiles keep the energy market twitchy and the war refuses to end on schedule. The beliefs hold the Planalto together, keep the public statements defiant, and shield the brand from the pro-Iran charge on the right and the not-radical-enough charge on the harder left. Question too many of them out loud and you become the minister labeled out of step with Brazil’s sovereign destiny.
