Chaired by India, the two-day BRICS meeting concluded without issuing a customary joint statement for the first time in the bloc’s history.
Image: TV BRICS
The BRICS Ministerial Summit in New Delhi on May 14–15, 2026, overlapped directly with the US-China summit in Beijing (May 13–15, 2026), during which United States President Donald Trump held high-level talks with President Xi Jinping.
Chaired by India, the two-day BRICS meeting concluded without issuing a customary joint statement for the first time in the bloc’s history. India only released a Chair’s Statement and Outcome Document, acknowledging “differing views among some members”, as deep divisions between Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made consensus impossible.
This deadlock in New Delhi occurred as China’s top leadership was engaging closely with the US in Beijing, with its Foreign Minister notably absent from the BRICS meeting to focus on hosting the US delegation.
This left India to manage the fallout of a predictable regional crisis within BRICS, one that followed the 2024 expansion strongly championed by China, which admitted both Iran and the UAE as full members despite their longstanding rivalries and Iran’s conflicts with most Arab League states.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi urged BRICS member states to condemn what he described as “violations of international law by the United States and Israel”. Without directly naming the UAE, Araghchi told a news conference following the meeting that a BRICS member had blocked key sections of India’s proposed statement.
“We have no difficulty with that certain country,” Araghchi said. “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.”
The UAE representative, Minister of State Khalifa bin Shaheen Al Marar, rejected Araghchi’s remarks, accusing him of attempting to justify “terrorist attacks” against the UAE and other Gulf states.
Al Marar said Iran had launched about 3 000 attacks on the UAE using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones since the war began. Saudi Arabia, which has been engaged with BRICS since its 2024 invitation, supported the Emirati position.
Consequently, while the enlarged BRICS was consumed by these internal contradictions from the Gulf Region, China was simultaneously conducting high-level diplomacy with Washington.
The 2024 expansion had always served Beijing’s strategic calculus more than the collective cohesion of the group; Iran’s inclusion, despite its longstanding proxy conflicts with most Arab League states and the new Gulf members, was a calculated risk that prioritised Chinese leverage over bloc harmony.
By keeping channels open with Trump even as BRICS grappled with the very divisions China had helped introduce, Beijing demonstrated its superpower habit of compartmentalising relationships.
The parallel events underscored a consistent pattern: China advanced its broader geopolitical architecture on its own terms, even when the resulting frictions left the rest of BRICS preoccupied with infighting rather than projecting unified Global-South leadership.
The Foreign Ministers’ meeting was intended to prepare the ground for the full heads-of-state summit scheduled for September 2026, with an agenda that included trade finance, local currency settlements, United Nations (UN) reforms, and the work of the New Development Bank (NDB). Instead, the gathering was consumed by the war that began on February 28, 2026, between Iran and a US-Israeli coalition.
As emerging markets weigh the way forward under the BRICS umbrella, the pattern is instructive. Superpowers continue to strike bilateral trade deals with one another, enlarge their military capabilities, and sell armaments to the very BRICS countries they instigate, all while pursuing side arrangements that bypass the bloc’s collective mechanisms.
This compartmentalised superpower diplomacy leaves middle and emerging powers exposed to the very fractures the expansion was meant to transcend.
The pragmatic path ahead for emerging markets therefore lies in treating BRICS less as a unified geopolitical counterweight to the West and more as a flexible platform for cooperation, advancing infrastructure financing and trade settlement reforms where consensus exists, while insulating core national interests from the intra-member conflicts that great-power enlargement strategies inevitably import.
In an era defined by a familiar superpower dynamic, where great powers such as the US and China maintain direct, high-level diplomatic engagement with one another while frequently tolerating, encouraging, or even stoking conflicts and rivalries among smaller and middle powers, India’s steady stewardship in New Delhi offers a compelling model for how nations should respond.
Rather than withdrawing in frustration or demanding premature unity, the approach is one of pragmatic realism: Remain constructively engaged in the forum, skillfully manage the resulting contradictions and crises, extract whatever practical gains are realistically available, and maintain the clear-eyed discipline not to pretend that the bloc can yet speak with one coherent voice on volatile security issues.
* Phapano Phasha is the chairperson of The Centre for Alternative Political and Economic Thought.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media.