Introduction
When India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar took the chair at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, he was presiding over the most consequential BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting since the bloc's expansion. Eleven member states sat around the table. The agenda was India's: global institutional reform, South-South cooperation, economic resilience, and the priorities of the developing world. The problem that arrived uninvited was the Iran war.
Top diplomats from BRICS nations, including rivals Iran and the United Arab Emirates, failed to issue a joint statement after a two-day meeting in New Delhi, exposing divisions within the bloc over the war in Iran. Host nation India instead released a Chair's Statement and Outcome Document, saying there were "differing views among some members" as regards the situation in the West Asia and Middle East region.
The inability to produce a joint declaration — the standard diplomatic deliverable of any ministerial meeting — was not a procedural failure. It was a substantive one, and it went to the heart of what BRICS is, what it has become after its 2024-2025 expansion, and whether it can function as a coherent voice for the Global South when its own members are on opposite sides of an active war.
The Meeting: Who Was There and What Was Planned
The meeting was held at Bharat Mandapam under India's 2026 chairship. It followed a preparatory ministerial held on September 26, 2025, on the sidelines of UNGA 80, where India as the incoming chair had set out its agenda.
Those in attendance included Indonesia's Foreign Minister Sugiono, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, South Africa's Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Brazil's Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos, China's Ambassador to India Xu Feihong, and UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalifa bin Shaheen Al Marar. Uganda's Foreign Minister Odondo Jeje Abubakha was also present as a representative of the bloc's outreach partners.
India's intended agenda was carefully constructed to avoid precisely the kind of confrontation that ultimately occurred. India's chairship theme — Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability — framed the meeting. Ministers reaffirmed BRICS's three pillars: political and security cooperation, economic and financial cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges. They repeated the bloc's commitment to openness, equality, and consensus.
What the Chair's Statement Covered
Despite the headline failure to produce a joint declaration, the Chair's Statement and Outcome Document ran to 63 paragraphs covering a wide range of issues where agreement was possible.
The Chair's Statement gave most space to reform of global institutions: the United Nations and its Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Members argued that present structures do not reflect contemporary realities and favour developed Western powers. The statement reiterated support for a multipolar order and for greater representation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in global decision-making.
On economic matters, the ministers called for resilient supply chains, fair trade, reform of the global financial architecture, expansion of local-currency trade, and stronger South-South cooperation. The bloc opposed unilateral sanctions, protectionism, and trade barriers, and backed a rules-based multilateral trading system centred on the WTO.
The document also covered cooperation on artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, cybersecurity, climate change, energy transition, health security, food security, and innovation-led growth. Initiatives endorsed included the BRICS Grain Exchange, cross-border payment systems, and a stronger role for the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement.
On geopolitics, the ministers discussed West Asia, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, but could not agree on language for the Iran war. The text instead set out general principles: diplomacy, humanitarian access, ceasefires, protection of civilians, and respect for international law. The ministers strongly condemned terrorism, including the Pahalgam attack of April 22, 2025, and called for closer counter-terrorism cooperation.
On Palestine specifically, the Chair's Statement had four paragraphs on Palestine, including one recognising a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine. The ministers recalled that the Gaza Strip is an inseparable part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and reaffirmed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to an independent State of Palestine.
The Fault Line: Iran vs. the UAE Inside the Same Bloc
The meeting's collapse into a Chair's Statement rather than a joint declaration had a specific cause, a specific pair of actors, and a specific set of paragraphs that could not be reconciled.
The central dispute was over how BRICS should describe the war involving Iran, the US, and Israel. Iran wanted the grouping to condemn US-Israeli attacks on it, while accusing the UAE — a fellow BRICS member and US ally — of direct involvement in military operations against Iran.
On the first day of talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called upon BRICS member states and the international community to explicitly condemn violations of international law by the United States and Israel, including their illegal aggression against Iran, to prevent the politicisation of international institutions, and to take concrete action to halt warmongering and bring an end to the impunity of those who violated the UN Charter.
Araghchi explicitly accused the UAE of being "directly involved in the aggression against my country." Tehran views the UAE and Saudi Arabia not as neutral neighbours but as "hostile bases" because they host critical US military infrastructure and failed to condemn the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
The UAE's response was unequivocal. UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalifa bin Shaheen Al Marar categorically rejected the allegations levelled by Iran and condemned what he termed "unjustified attacks" on civilian infrastructure. He defended UAE sovereignty against Iran's charges in his national statement. "Despite numerous international and regional resolutions and condemnations, Iran has continued its terrorist attacks against the UAE and other countries in the region, in clear disregard of the international consensus," he said.
It is learnt that Iran had an issue specifically with paragraphs 26 and 29 of the proposed joint statement — the paragraphs covering Palestine and the Red Sea respectively. However, Araghchi, without naming the UAE, blamed a country "in the region with a special partnership with Israel" for the lack of consensus.
After the talks concluded, Araghchi told a press conference that a BRICS member blocked some parts of the statement. "We have no difficulty with that certain country — they have not been our target in the current war. We only hit American military bases and American military installations which are unfortunately on their soil," he said, adding that he hoped things would change when BRICS leaders meet later this year.
This was the second time in two months that a BRICS meeting under India's chairship had failed to issue a joint statement. The previous failure was at a meeting of deputy foreign ministers and special envoys on the Middle East and North Africa, where differences between Iran and the UAE, as well as India looking to dilute language on Palestine, led to the lack of a consensus outcome document.
India's Delicate Balancing Act
India's position at this meeting was acutely uncomfortable. As the BRICS chair, it needed to produce a consensual outcome. As a nation with deep interests in both Iran and the Gulf, it could not take sides. As an economy battered by the Hormuz closure, it needed the war to end. All three of these imperatives pulled in different directions.
India, the world's third-biggest oil importer and consumer, has been hit hard by Iran's effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas travel in normal times. Iranian attacks have been linked to the deaths of at least three Indian personnel in the waterway, and an India-flagged ship was sunk as Araghchi visited New Delhi.
Adding to the diplomatic complexity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Abu Dhabi at the same time as the Delhi meeting. During his stop in the UAE, Modi condemned attacks on the Gulf country. "The way the UAE was targeted is unacceptable in any form. In these difficult circumstances, the restraint and courage you demonstrated are highly commendable," Modi said. The Indian Prime Minister making those remarks while his Foreign Minister was simultaneously receiving Iran's Araghchi in New Delhi illustrated the full weight of India's competing commitments.
Before departing New Delhi, Araghchi held a bilateral meeting with Jaishankar in which both sides discussed the "complicated situation" at the Strait of Hormuz. Araghchi said New Delhi should play a "constructive role" in resolving the West Asian crisis due to its "good reputation" across the entire Gulf region.
Araghchi also said Iran is keen on India developing the strategic Chabahar Port project, describing it as a "golden gate" for India to access Central Asian and European markets. India is currently negotiating with the United States to extend the sanctions waiver it had obtained in 2025 in order to work on the port project. The US conditional sanctions waiver for the Chabahar Port project officially expired on April 26, 2026.
Jaishankar used the meeting to argue that global institutions needed reform, saying the UN structure reflected an "earlier era" and calling for greater representation from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The message fit India's broader BRICS agenda, but the meeting's outcome showed the limits of institutional reform rhetoric when members cannot agree on an ongoing war.
India's Shifting Position on Palestine
One of the more substantive sub-plots of the Delhi meeting was India's own changing position on the Palestinian issue between the April deputy ministers' meeting and the May Foreign Ministers' meeting.
India changed its position on the recognition of a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine between the two meetings. During the April meeting of deputy foreign ministers and special envoys, India had diluted the language on Palestine to roughly two paragraphs. The earlier position of the BRICS grouping as elucidated by the joint statement under Brazil's chairship last year had 16 paragraphs on the situation in Palestine alone. The drastic change in language had surprised a number of member states, as it was perceived that India was looking to make the language similar to an earlier statement issued during the India-Arab League foreign ministers' meeting held in January. However, the Chair's Statement published after the foreign ministers' meeting had four paragraphs on Palestine, including one reverting to recognising a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.
This shift — diluting Palestine language in April, then partially restoring it in May — illustrates the competing pressures on India as BRICS chair: maintaining credibility with Arab and African BRICS members, managing its own relationship with Israel, and avoiding a complete breakdown of the meeting.
The Enlargement Problem: A Wider Tent, Sharper Contradictions
The failure in Delhi is inseparable from the story of BRICS enlargement. The bloc, originally five members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — expanded in 2024 to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia.
The expanded BRICS now has eleven members: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. The eleven account for roughly 45% of the world's population, around 40% of global GDP measured at purchasing power parity, and an expanded share of global trade.
The arithmetic strengthens the bloc on paper. The politics complicate it. Adding major West Asian states brought regional rivalries directly into BRICS, and that became visible in the Delhi meeting.
Israel recently deployed an Iron Dome air defence system for the UAE during the active phase of the conflict, highlighting the growing security convergence between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. That alignment sits in direct contradiction with Iran's position as a BRICS member that is at war with Israel and the United States. These are not abstract ideological differences. They are active military alignments within the same multilateral grouping.
BRICS still operates as a flexible platform on which states pursue parallel national interests under a shared Global South narrative. Unlike NATO, the European Union, or the G7, BRICS has no formal mechanisms for crisis management, dispute resolution, or collective strategic coordination. That limits its effectiveness in major geopolitical crises and pushes day-to-day cooperation back onto the economic and technical tracks where consensus is easier to hold.
The Road to September: Can the Leaders' Summit Do Better?
The 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit is scheduled for New Delhi on September 12 and 13, 2026. It will be the first test of whether heads of state can hold a line that their foreign ministers could not.
Araghchi said at his departing press conference that he hoped BRICS members would reach a better understanding before the leaders' summit. The diplomatic math for that outcome is daunting. The Iran-UAE confrontation within BRICS is not a misunderstanding that can easily be smoothed over through diplomacy. It is rooted in an active military conflict in which both are participants on opposing sides — the first time in BRICS history that two member states have been direct adversaries in an ongoing war.
For the September summit to succeed where the foreign ministers' meeting failed, the Iran war would need to move meaningfully toward resolution, or the bloc would need to develop a framework for managing internal conflict that it currently does not possess. The alternative — a leaders' summit that also fails to produce a joint statement — would be a significantly more damaging outcome for both BRICS's credibility and India's chairship.
What the Delhi Meeting Tells Us About BRICS Today
Three things emerged clearly from the meeting at Bharat Mandapam.
First, the Iran war has done what no previous geopolitical crisis has managed to do: it has placed two active BRICS members in direct military opposition to each other within the bloc's own deliberations. That is a qualitatively new challenge for the grouping and one its founding consensus-based architecture was never designed to handle.
Second, India's chairship is under real strain. India entered 2026 with a clear agenda — position BRICS as a constructive, development-focused forum for Global South priorities, build momentum for institutional reform, and demonstrate that a multipolar world order can deliver better governance than the current one. The West Asia crisis has made each of those goals harder to achieve. The Hormuz blockade is directly damaging India's economy, and the Iran-UAE confrontation is making India's chairship look diplomatically exposed.
Third, the bloc's genuine value is increasingly concentrated in its economic and technical tracks — the New Development Bank, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, local-currency trade, the BRICS Grain Exchange, and the broader agenda of reforming financial architecture. These areas retain genuine buy-in from all eleven members. The security and political tracks, by contrast, are where enlargement has made consensus structurally harder rather than structurally stronger.
The Chair's Statement from Delhi was 63 paragraphs long and covered a serious range of global issues. But the paragraph it could not write — a unified position on an active war involving members within its own ranks — said more than all 63 put together.
