Core Summary
The BBC reported on September 13 that the Iran war is reshaping cooperation within the Brics grouping while also exposing deep internal divisions over how to build an alternative international order, advance a common currency and set up a dispute-resolution mechanism. Brics members broadly agree that a new global order is needed but have so far failed to converge on what should replace the existing one or on how to make that vision operational. Several observers note that the Iran war could become the moment when the Brics shifts its priority from expansion to substantive coordination, but internal disagreements are likely to persist in the short term.
Event Details
Multiple Brics responses to the Iran war. In its review of recent diplomatic dynamics within the Brics, the BBC noted that since the Iran war began, members have conducted intensive interactions on humanitarian aid, diplomatic mediation, energy-market stability and cross-border payment channels. Multiple diplomatic documents show that core members including Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa have held several rounds of ministerial and leaders-level consultations on the Iran situation, and some early coordination outcomes have already emerged in areas such as energy-transit security, food supply and financial-settlement channels.
Diverse positions brought in by new members. In the expansion rounds of the past two years, the Brics has brought in members including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia, significantly widening the internal diversity of regional interests, foreign-policy posture and security outlook within the grouping. The BBC analysis notes that during the Iran war, several new members’ public positions on the conflict have visibly diverged from their behind-the-scenes positions because of geography, energy interests and historical alignment, raising the difficulty of coordinating joint statements, external messaging and concrete aid packages within the grouping.
Slowdown in the push for a common currency and alternative settlement systems. Before the Iran war, members had held several rounds of consultations on promoting local-currency settlement, expanding the mandate of the Brics New Development Bank and building alternative cross-border payment channels. After the war broke out, those discussions were affected by multiple practical factors; several members turned to urgent priorities such as energy security, foreign-exchange stability and food-import security, visibly slowing the pace of progress on the common-currency and alternative-settlement agenda.
Still no consensus on a dispute-resolution mechanism. The BBC notes that members broadly agree on the need to build an internal dispute-resolution mechanism within the grouping, but on concrete design issues such as jurisdictional scope, decision-making procedure, voting mechanism and means of execution, there is still no clear consensus. During the Iran war, internal disagreements emerged over whether to exclude specific countries from specific agenda items and whether to set up a neutral mediation mechanism, reflecting that the grouping’s maturity in institution-building remains limited.
Limited progress on foreign-policy coordination. Although the grouping has issued coordinated positions on the Iran situation at multiple multilateral venues, concrete foreign-policy actions are still mainly taken by individual members on the basis of their own interests. Russia and Iran maintain their traditional cooperation in military, security and energy fields; China has kept a relatively independent posture on energy imports, diplomatic mediation and UN voting; India has focused more on energy prices, the safety of its own nationals and regional balance; Brazil and South Africa have engaged more from a humanitarian and multilateralist angle. This pattern means that Brics foreign-policy coordination in the Iran war remains at the level of principle rather than as concrete joint action.
Wider Perspective
The impact of the Iran war on the Brics is not limited to the spillover of a regional conflict. It is a concentrated expression of the multiple structural challenges the grouping must face as it transitions from an ’expansion-first’ phase to a ‘substantive coordination’ phase, and its impact will continue to surface in the multilateral-governance architecture, energy-market structure, cross-border financial system and relations among major emerging economies.
The Brics is in a critical transition from ‘scale expansion’ to ‘substantive coordination’. Over the past two years, the grouping has significantly expanded its membership and representativeness through multiple enlargement rounds, but the maturity of internal institution-building, decision-making and joint-action capacity has not kept pace. The Iran war, as a regional conflict that touches the interests of core members, has become a natural test of the grouping’s coordination capacity. Several observations indicate that whether the Brics can form concrete coordinated actions on multiple specific issues in the next twelve to twenty-four months will directly determine its actual influence in the global-governance system.
An alternative to the multilateral governance system still lacks a clear roadmap. Members of the Brics share a strong consensus on the goal of building a new global order, but on concrete alternatives they remain stuck at the level of principled statements. During the Iran war, the grouping exposed dispersed action and divergent positions in several potential coordination areas such as humanitarian aid, diplomatic mediation, energy-market stability and cross-border payments. This pattern means that building a meaningful alternative to multilateral governance requires not only political will but also long-term institution-building, rule consensus and execution capacity, none of which is likely to deliver a systemic breakthrough in the short term.
The push for diversification of energy and financial infrastructure will continue to strengthen. The Iran war has once again highlighted the heavy dependence of emerging economies on a single dominant currency and a single transit route for energy imports, foreign-exchange reserves and cross-border settlement. Multiple analyses argue that the Brics will, in the coming period, accelerate concrete projects in local-currency settlement, alternative payment channels, energy-trade invoicing in local currencies and expanded lending by the New Development Bank. If those projects materialise over the next few years, they will have a structural impact on the existing global energy-trade and cross-border financial system.
Internal divergence in security outlook will keep widening. After the new members joined, the Brics grouping saw a notable widening of differences in geopolitical stance, security outlook and foreign-policy direction. During the Iran war, some members tended to treat the conflict as an extension of geopolitical competition and prioritised the overall interests of the grouping; other members focused more on their own energy security, foreign-exchange stability and regional balance and did not want to be drawn in deeply. Those differences are unlikely to disappear in the near term and may surface again in future regional conflicts of a similar kind. Coordination on security issues will be a more complex and challenging long-term agenda than economic issues.
Competition for representativeness in multilateral diplomatic arenas will intensify further. The Brics has long pushed for greater representation of emerging economies in the United Nations, the G20, the WTO and other multilateral venues, and the Iran war has become a concentrated test of the grouping’s ability to project a unified voice externally. Multiple diplomatic observations indicate that, going forward, the Brics will increasingly emphasise its identity as a representative of the ‘Global South’ in multilateral settings and will use coordinated positions to push specific issues onto the multilateral agenda. This representativeness competition will continue to exert pressure on the existing multilateral governance architecture and may, in the coming years, drive internal-reform discussions within several international institutions.
Comparison of Multiple Viewpoints
The coordination camp inside the Brics tends to see the Iran war as an important opportunity for the grouping to push forward substantive coordination. It favours the rapid formation of executable coordinated actions in humanitarian aid, diplomatic mediation, energy-market stability and cross-border payments, and wants to use those actions as a basis for subsequent institution-building.
The realist camp inside the Brics is more cautious about the prospects for coordination in the short term. It argues that the divergence of regional interests, energy structures and foreign-policy positions among members means the grouping cannot form real joint action on a major regional conflict, and that cooperation should be advanced step by step through bilateral and multilateral projects.
Russia and China have shown a closer cooperative posture during the Iran war, with significantly deeper interaction in energy, security and multilateral diplomacy. Multiple analyses argue that the deepening of Russia-China cooperation will, to some extent, strengthen the grouping’s coordination capacity in multilateral settings, but it has also raised concerns among some members that the grouping may be dominated by bilateral relations.
India, Brazil and South Africa have engaged with the Iran war discussion more from humanitarian, multilateralist and developing-country perspectives. They emphasise that the conflict should be resolved through diplomatic channels and have put forward concrete suggestions on the grouping’s coordination mechanism and representative structure.
The new Gulf members, given the close connection of geography and energy interests, are highly sensitive to their stance on the Iran war. Multiple diplomatic sources indicate that they tend to take a pragmatic position in internal Brics coordination, both hoping to use the grouping as a platform to defend their own interests and wanting to avoid being drawn deeply into the multilateral game around the conflict.
Western mainstream media and research institutes generally assess that the coordination capacity shown by the Brics during the Iran war is still limited, and that on core agendas such as alternative global governance, internal dispute resolution and a common currency, the grouping remains far from producing executable plans.
International energy and financial-market participants pay closer attention to concrete progress on projects such as energy-trade invoicing in local currencies and alternative payment channels, because if those projects materialise they will directly affect global energy pricing, cross-border finance and the structure of foreign-exchange markets.
Editor: GoodInfo Global News Desk