◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek July 22, 201936
hesaid.“Long-terminvestorsdon’tinvestina
country that attacks its institutions.” Maia wept as
his supporters gave him a standing ovation.
Effective but uncharismatic, Maia may have
a ceiling on his ambitions. Although he’s been
reelected repeatedly, he won his latest term with
relatively few votes. When he ran for mayor in Rio
de Janeiro in 2012, he garnered less than 3% sup-port. “What politicians see in politicians isn’t neces-
sarily what the people see,” says PSL Senator Major
Olímpio. Maia’s biggest accomplishment may be
making the traditionally compliant lower house a
force of its own. “In the past, the legislature was
treated as a kind of appendix of the executive,” says
Michel Temer, himself a former three-time house
speaker, who became president after Rousseff ’s
fall. “Congress is going through a great moment.”THEBOTTOMLINE AlthoughhelacksBolsonaro’smagnetism,
Maia has succeeded where the president fails by patiently and
painstakingly building coalitions—and power.◀ An inflated version of
the lower house speaker
at a São Paulo protestMarcos Pereira, deputy speaker of the lower
house and former minister, says the legislature is a
bulwark against those who would return the nation
to autocracy. “This is democracy, and not handing
over power to the hands of a sovereign,” he says.
“Bolsonaro’s voters don’t understand this.”
Bolsonaro’s son Carlos has repeatedly whipped
up his massive social media following against Maia.
At one point, Maia threatened to walk away from
the pension bill in protest. When the pension mea-
sure passed, Maia made no reference to Bolsonaro.
He didn’t need to. “Maia’s come out stronger from
this,” Favaro says.
“Pressure, criticism is always important so that
we can reflect on what we are doing,” Maia said in a
text message. “What sometimes bothers me is that
there is a group of people around the president that
is very radical, that isn’t really against me or dep-
uty A, B, or C, or this or that senator or Supreme
Court judge. They’re against the institutions.” He
added, “They’re a movement, an antidemocratic
fringe andthisdoesn’tpressureme,butit does
worry me.”�SimoneIglesiasandSamyAdghirni,
with RachelGamarski and MarioSergioLima● Europe has few levers to pull to defuse tensions between the U.S. and IranOn July 9, French President Emmanuel Macron sent
his top diplomatic adviser to Tehran on a mission to
ease spiraling tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
Having cultivated direct lines to President Trump
and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and spoken
to each since Trump ordered and then canceled air-
strikes on the Islamic Republic in June, Macron saw
the potential for dialogue. For all the chest thump-
ing, he was confident the Iranians didn’t want fur-
ther escalation, according to a person familiar with
the French president’s thinking. Trump’s aggressive
approach, Macron reasoned, was nothing but a tac-
tic from his past life as a real estate dealmaker.
The message that envoy Emmanuel Bonne deliv-
ered to Tehran was simple: A pause in nuclear activ-
ities, which Iran had restarted a year after the U.S.
violated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action( JCPOA) by exiting it and imposing new sanctions,
would be to its advantage. But during Bonne’s meet-
ing with Rouhani, Trump fired off another incendi-
ary tweet, accusing Iran of having long violated the
nuclear deal in secret and pledging to “substantially”
increase sanctions. Hours later, reports emerged
that Iranian vessels had tried to impede a U.K. tanker
in the Strait of Hormuz, a claim Iran rejected.
European nations, especially France and
Germany, have been trying to save what’s left of
the JCPOA, which promised to plug Iran into global
trade in exchange for curbing its nuclear program.
But their efforts have been frustrated by Trump’s
unpredictability, which has unsettled already frag-
ile relationships with theIslamicRepublic.
Iran says its activitieshardlyconstitutea vio-
lation, pointing to Article26, which says it couldBureau
Q3’08 Q2 ’198k40● Iran’s uranium
stockpile, in kilograms