The heads of the BRICS group opened a two-day summit in New Delhi on September 12 and signed off on a joint declaration that pressed for calm in the Middle East and championed the free flow of trade. The meeting assembled the leaders of a widened bloc that now numbers 11 members spread across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India chaired the talks, which pulled in President Xi Jinping of China, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, alongside leaders from South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. For Xi the trip was his first to India in seven years, a marker of tentative thaw between the two rivals even as they jostle for sway across the region.
On the Middle East, the text called for maximum restraint and set out firm opposition to the forced removal of Palestinians and to Israeli operations in Gaza. It backed full United Nations membership for Palestine and endorsed the ongoing work of UNRWA, the UN body that aids Palestinian refugees. The wording captured a broad, if loosely drawn, consensus on the human cost of the war.
The economic passages stood up for open supply chains and steady commerce, and they logged the group’s objection to unilateral tariffs. Members promised to widen payment systems that run outside Western finance and to work more closely on artificial intelligence. That language sat against a run of US tariffs aimed at several members and repeated jabs from President Donald Trump, who has branded the bloc anti-American. The drive to build alternatives to Western finance has become a recurring theme for the group as it seeks a larger say in the running of the global economy.
Under the shared script, the divisions were plain. Iran and the United Arab Emirates, both inside the group, line up on opposite sides of the US and Israeli confrontation with Tehran, and an earlier foreign ministers’ meeting had ended with no joint word on that conflict. Xi told delegates that the fighting in the Middle East served no one’s common interest, a careful phrase that showed how far the members remain from one voice on the region.
