A two-day meeting of BRICS foreign ministers in New Delhi ended on Friday without a common position on the war on Iran, with the bloc’s outcome document acknowledging only that “differing views” remained among members.
It was the second consecutive BRICS gathering in India to fail to produce a consensus on the conflict involving the United States and Israel. The meeting opened on Thursday at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi under the chairship of Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. It marked the first major ministerial engagement under India’s 2026 BRICS presidency.
The 10-member grouping of emerging economies coordinates on economic and security issues while seeking a greater voice for the Global South in institutions long dominated by Western powers. A leaders’ summit is scheduled for September in India.
The meeting unfolded against the backdrop of the US-Israel war on Iran, now in its 77th day.
The latest conflict began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iranian military sites, nuclear facilities and infrastructure. Since then, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, global energy prices have surged and diplomatic efforts, including Pakistan-mediated talks in Islamabad last month, have stalled. The US also imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports on April 13.
The BRICS meeting coincided with US President Donald Trump’s state visit to China, the first by an American president to Beijing in nearly a decade. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Beijing, so China was represented at the BRICS meet instead by its ambassador to India, Xu Feihong. Alongside Araghchi, the meeting was attended by Russia’s Sergey Lavrov, Brazil’s Mauro Vieira, South Africa’s Ronald Lamola, and the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the visiting ministers on the sidelines before departing for Abu Dhabi.
The United Arab Emirates sent Khalifa bin Shaheen Al Marar, its minister of state for foreign affairs, rather than its foreign minister. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had initially avoided naming the UAE in his formal address once the summit began. Later, he said that it was not an act of restraint but “for the sake of maintaining unity”, according to Iranian state media.
Araghchi urged BRICS members to explicitly condemn what he described as US and Israeli “violations of international law” and to “take concrete action to halt warmongering and bring an end to the impunity of those who violate the UN Charter”.
“We believe that BRICS can, and must, become one of the principal pillars in shaping a more just, balanced and humane global order, an order in which might can never be right,” he said.
The UAE’s representative, Al Marar, used his own statement to single out Iran in his national statement and called for condemnation of Iranian actions, according to media reports.
The exchange exposed the deepest fault line within the expanded bloc, which now includes both Iran and the UAE as full members despite the two standing on opposite sides of an active conflict.
After all member states had spoken, Araghchi requested the floor again.
“The UAE was directly involved in the aggression against my country,” he told the gathering, according to the Iranian state media. “When the attacks started, they didn’t even issue a condemnation.”
He accused the UAE of allowing the US to use Emirati territory to launch attacks on Iran and said Emirati aircraft had directly participated in strikes.
“Yesterday it was revealed that UAE fighter jets participated in attacks against us and even took direct action against us. Therefore, the UAE is an active partner in this aggression,” he said, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency.
Araghchi also criticised Abu Dhabi for not condemning an attack on a school in Minab city on the first day of the conflict, in which Iran says about 170 students were killed.
Iran, he argued, had not attacked the UAE itself, but only US military bases located on Emirati territory.
Source: Here
