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Brazil is halting its attempt to broker a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme – an issue that has brought relations between the Lula da Silva government and the Obama administration to a new low.

Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times the country would no longer seek to settle the nuclear dispute after the US rejected a Turkish-Brazilian deal with Iran to exchange half Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel for a research reactor.

“We got our fingers burned by doing things that everybody said were helpful and in the end we found that some people could not take ‘yes’ for an answer,” said Mr Amorim in a clear reference to Washington.

“If we are required [to negotiate again], maybe we can still be useful . . . But we are not going out in a proactive way again unless we are required to.”

A senior US administration official welcomed the news that Brasília would no longer place itself in the forefront of negotiations in view of the decision by Brazil and Turkey to vote against United Nations sanctions on Iran this month.