There is an unmistakable tension in the air over New Delhi this weekend, as leaders from Iran, Russia, China, and more than a dozen other economies gather for the 18th BRICS summit. On the surface, this is an opportunity to celebrate a once-loosely named acronym that has become a defining institution of the “Global South,” but the timing could not be more fraught. The summit, taking place on September 12 and 13, arrives at a moment when conflict and diplomacy are tangled in nearly every region. It comes just months after a major war erupted in the Middle East, with Washington directly embroiled in confrontations with Tehran, and with regional violence spiking again only weeks ago. It also follows hot on the heels of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, where several of the same leaders sat side by side in careful choreography. BRICS, meanwhile, looks very different from the group that first came together in 2006, when Brazil, Russia, India, and China created it as a meeting place for major emerging economies outside the usual Western orbit. Since then, it has welcomed Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and more countries are knocking at the door. At a time of global polarisation, soaring energy costs, and anxieties about another great war, this meeting is not a distant diplomatic formality but something that will be watched closely by ordinary people—especially those who feel the pain of higher fuel, food, and transportation costs when world tensions seep into their daily lives.
At the front and center of the summit is the old, vexed friendship between Iran and India, a relationship that combines centuries of trade and culture with the reality of sanctions and shifting alliances. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to highlight everything from trade and connectivity to energy cooperation and regional developments, and their meeting comes less than two weeks after their countries reaffirmed a “longstanding strategic partnership.” Tehran has been torn between deepening ties with Moscow and Beijing and trying to maintain its own room for maneuver, and under the threat of an all-out economic onslaught from Washington, that room is shrinking. Iran is now actively seeking membership in the BRICS New Development Bank, hoping to secure a financial flow that can survive American pressure. That campaign will unfold in front of an unusually valuable audience: China, India, Russia, and the UAE, among Iran’s largest remaining trading partners, all have representatives in the same New Delhi hall. But the optimism is complicated by facts on the ground. For all the warm talk of brotherhood, the UAE cut off many commercial and financial dealings with Tehran, creating a impossible ban for Indian exporters who had traditionally used Dubai as a gateway to Iranian markets. Squeezed from every side, Tehran must make a careful calculation between economic reality and political symbolism, while New Delhi does a parallel balancing act between its energy needs, its strong ties with the Gulf, and its refusal to align completely with American sanctions. The outcome will be felt not only at the negotiating table but in the price of a barrel of oil and the ability of Iranian families to buy basic goods.
The other major face in the room is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is visiting India for the first time in seven years, a trip that speaks volumes about the very fragile thaw between two of the world’s topmost powers. At the moment, when the India-China relationship is still infected by mistrust after a deadly military clash along the disputed Himalayan border in 2020, this gesture is a cautious step toward normalization. Both sides know that outright peace, or even a partial stability across their long and heavily militarized boundary, is necessary for the Southern economy and for confidence in Asia. A bilateral meeting between Xi and Modi is expected to focus less on monuments of friendship and more on the mechanisms for managing friction while reopening opportunities for economic and infrastructure cooperation. But beneath the handshakes, the memory of the Galwan Valley clash lingers, and no one expects a grand embrace. The shift is communicated through details: not a proposal of alliance, but a mutual resource of interest to ensure that their differences do not use the main route of their relationship. For the rest of BRICS, this is still a preview of whether the world’s two largest developing countries can appear in sign together, or whether their old suspicion will deeply color every future initiative. That there may be gas, not just diamonds, on this side of the table is itself a sign that India’s pain not to let the worldly rivalry swallow the weekend.
Russia also comes to New Delhi with quietly heavy suitcase. President Vladimir Putin’s pre-summit meeting with Modi on Friday is his first trip to India since the start of the Ukraine war, and although Moscow’s official media has downplayed the symbolism, security and defense roads are clearly central. Russia has been reorienting its energy markets toward Asia after Western sanctions, and India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, has been a eager buyer. Moscow says Indian imports of Russian energy have reached a “new record” every month, and that market continues to expand. Putin, true to form, than dismissed American tariffs and extraterritorial pressure as “illegal” and “unacceptable,” while stressing that Moscow understands India’s position on Russia’s war in Ukraine and that it “to a great extent corresponds” with the Russian own position. It is a way of saying that Russia does not want a full embassy of New Delhi’s diplomacy, but would like India as an honest broker and perhaps a permanent sheriff of its interests. In the background to this sits the United Arab Emirates, a BRICS member and an increasingly influential mediator in global peace talks, whose forceful diplomatic role in the conversation both Putin and other leaders have openly welcomed. Next to the UAE, Saudi Arabia’s entrance is equally important, especially after Iran-backed Houthi militias attacked Saudi cities again this, reminding everyone how easily long-ranging regional rivalries can drag any summit. For India, this is the hardest part: the same leaders in the room have often been enemies on the ground, and line between facilitator and translator is thin.
This is precisely why the summit will be a masterclass in contradiction management. India, having spent decades building bridges to Washington while maintaining old friends in Moscow and Tehran, is now expected to produce a unified position among members that does not look normally anti-Western, but also not weak in the face of the European concerns. “New Delhi’s leadership of BRICS is ultimately an exercise in managing contradiction. The biggest challenge is to ensure BRICS remains a platform for advancing Global South priorities rather than becoming an arena for great-power rivalry,” says Harsh V. Pant, vice president at the observer Research Foundation in India. But the contradictions are deep: China and the United States at Odds, Russia fighting a war in Ukraine, Iran and Israel in conflict, and the UAE and Tehran at each whispering. Each member nation has its own priorities; a single position on energy prices, nuclear sanctuaries, or in macro sanctions is almost impossible. If India brings them all to a single table at all without the room being stuck in hostility, analysts say that would be a clear diplomatic victory. If the talks yields nothing but words, it will expose the limits of BRICS, now a group whose diversifying membership has imported local grudges that were previously not part of its rich-group DNA. And no one can afford to dismiss this body: behind the scenes, BRICS members have been heavily involved in mediation of every cease fire in recent conflicts, and many unresolved diplomatic disputes will find their way into the corridors of the summit.
But the deepest test is not about geopolitics alone. It is about what the Global South can do for its own countries after a decade of compounding crises. India is the world’s third-largest oil importer and consumer, and any rupture in the region rises costs and interests directly for its citizens. The same is true for poorer countries represented in BRICS, which have already suffered the greatest consequences of inflation and geopolitical fragment. India’s ambition is to use the chair, speaking in opinion interviews, to show that there is a road between yesterday’s Western order and the peripheries of Chinese and Russian irredentists. “Hosting the BRICS summit in New Delhi offers India an important opportunity to demonstrate the logic of its multi-alignment at a time when global politics is becoming increasingly polarized,” says international analyst Pant. “Bringing together countries such as China, Russia, Iran and the Gulf states while at the same time deepening partnership with the United States and the Quad, India shows that it does not accept binary choices imposed by great-power rivalry.” The litmus test, he says, will be “India’s ability to keep BRICS sufficiently inclusive and functional to address Global South priorities while preventing geopolitical divisions from paralyzing the grouping.” If that works, the coalition can continue to be a clearinghouse for practical progress— in energy, in development, in trading and insurance mechanisms. If not, this summit may be remembered as the moment the promotion outgrew its most central member. For now, as the flags go up over New Delhi, the waiters of the ordinary world watch not the florid menus or foreign spent but where the trains connect, whether the grain ships sail, and whether the primitive jobs from describing to forge peace could actually help stabilise their political feelings.
