The Iran-UAE confrontation has emerged as the most consequential geopolitical stress test for BRICS since its expansion. The crisis has exposed the limits of a consensus-driven model when two full members find themselves on opposing sides of an active conflict. What was presented as an effort to give greater institutional weight to the Global South has, in 2026, confronted the harder reality of managing deep strategic divergences among a larger and more heterogeneous membership.
Iran’s subsequent missile and drone strikes against US bases and other targets in the Gulf, including sites in the UAE, brought the confrontation closer to BRICS’ own institutional space. Abu Dhabi’s decision in August to suspend trade and financial transactions with Tehran and close its embassy in Iran further hardened the divide. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, meanwhile, ensured that the conflict could not be compartmentalised as a bilateral Iranian-UAE dispute. It became an energy, shipping and economic-security crisis with consequences for the wider global economy. The clearest manifestation of the problem has been diplomatic. At the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the UAE of facilitating or assisting US-Israeli operations, while the UAE rejected the allegations and stressed Iranian attacks against its territory and shipping. The inability to reconcile these positions meant that the grouping could not produce a full joint communiqué. Instead, the chair’s statement acknowledged differing views while allowing members to maintain their respective national positions. The negotiations over a possible Delhi Declaration on West Asia have become a test of whether the Indian chair can prevent the Iran-UAE confrontation from paralysing the organisation. Russia has acknowledged that these differences are complicating the drafting process, while Moscow has also offered to facilitate the normalisation of Iran-UAE relations. India, together with Russia, Brazil and Egypt, has been engaged in bilateral efforts to narrow the gap. Yet mediation within a multilateral grouping is inherently constrained when the disputants themselves are members whose consent is necessary for consensus. The Iran-UAE rupture also carries a direct economic cost for BRICS. The suspension of bilateral trade and financial transactions complicates the bloc’s broader ambition of deepening intra-BRICS economic integration. The disruption of Hormuz adds another layer of vulnerability, particularly for energy-importing members. The crisis does not necessarily make the New Delhi summit irrelevant. Indeed, BRICS may offer one of the few diplomatic settings in which Iran and the UAE can remain in the same institutional conversation while other influential actors-India, Russia, China and Egypt-retain relationships with both sides. There is consequently some scope for quiet diplomacy, even if a grand political settlement is unrealistic. The summit could provide space for confidence-building measures, maritime de-escalation and discussions aimed at reducing the immediate economic consequences of the confrontation. But expectations will have to remain modest. If the political declaration is substantially diluted or abandoned, the summit may shift its centre of gravity towards less contentious areas: trade, development finance, transactions in national currencies and the agenda of the New Development Bank. Such an outcome would preserve BRICS as an economic and institutional project, but it would also reveal the limits of its geopolitical ambitions.
The BRICS Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi on 12-13 September has consequently acquired significance beyond the usual summit agenda.
A carefully negotiated compromise could demonstrate that an enlarged BRICS can absorb serious internal disagreements without losing relevance. A weak or absent political statement, by contrast, would underline the structural limits of consensus in a grouping whose geopolitical diversity is now both its principal strength and its central vulnerability. The New Delhi summit will therefore be watched not simply for the language of its declaration but for what that language says about the organisation itself.
