Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is scheduled for another visit to Beijing, China, on Wednesday after an unsuccessful effort to garner support for Tehran’s cause at the BRICS summit in New Delhi over the weekend.
BRICS is an economic bloc founded by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2006. The first formal summit for the group, then known as BRIC, was held in 2009. South Africa joined and added the “S” to its name in 2010.
In 2024, the membership was expanded to include five more countries, including Iran. Two of the other new members were Middle Eastern countries that had dicey relations with Iran: Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This contributed to the perception that BRICS members had little in common beyond a desire for higher status than they received at Western-dominated forums like the Group of Seven (G7).
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Araghchi came to the New Delhi summit hoping to get BRICS united behind Iran against the United States, but the only newsworthy moment he managed was a clip of him laughing at some shared joke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping — two ugly authoritarian states that were already in Iran’s corner.
Aragchi made an effort to woo India, telling Indian reporters on Friday that Iran fully supported BRICS and applauded India for its leadership as the current rotating president. He made a push for BRICS countries to strengthen their national currencies and use them for trade within the bloc, instead of relying on the U.S. dollar but, given that Iran’s rial is now almost completely worthless, the appetite of other BRICS members for doing business in rials is probably limited.
In this photo provided by Egypt’s presidency media office, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, right, walks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, at the Al-Ittihadiya Presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, September 2, 2026. (Egyptian Presidency Media Office via AP)
IranWire noted on Monday that BRICS cannot do much more for Iran than issue statements opposing unilateral Western sanctions and hoping that hostilities in the Middle East are concluded soon:
The group is neither a mutual defense alliance nor a cohesive anti-Western bloc; members like India, the UAE, and Brazil maintain distinct strategic priorities and vital relationships with the United States. Even China and Russia calibrate their economic engagement strictly around national interests and remain hesitant to enter into direct financial confrontations with Washington to bypass sanctions on Iran.
Also, Iran has attacked several of the newer BRICS members in the Middle East with drones and missiles. Araghchi claimed the UAE was “directly complicit in the act of aggression against my country” at the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting. This did not win any friends for Iran at the summit.
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IranWire noted that the final statement from the BRICS summit did not include Iran’s requested “explicit condemnation of unilateral U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.” The statement did not mention the U.S. or Israel by name at all.
The BRICS statement called for “the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure,” which is at least as much a condemnation of Iran as anyone else, since Iran’s entire “war strategy” involves launching missiles and drones at civilian buildings and ships.
The joint statement also expressed “deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in the Middle East,” at a moment when Iran and its allies in Yemen, the Houthi insurgents, are the ones escalating the crisis with major attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Al Jazeera News observed that the New Delhi statement from BRICS “adopted much more explicit language” concerning Israel and the Palestinians, including “firm opposition” to any effort to “change the geography or demography of the occupied Palestinian territory,” a demand for Israel to end its “genocidal war on Gaza,” and demands for a Palestinian state with full membership in the United Nations.
The Iranians were left muttering that BRICS frequently talks about getting past the era of Western unilateralism, but most of its members are unwilling to do anything that might provoke the United States or Europe, or trigger devastating Western sanctions.
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