BRICS Foreign Ministers Meet in New Delhi Amid Iran War Divisions and China's Absent FM
Primary region BRICS
Tags Diplomacy · Security
Regions BRICS · Asia · Middle East
BRICS foreign ministers gathered in New Delhi on May 14-15 for a two-day meeting chaired by Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi skipped the meeting due to President Trump's visit to Beijing, with China represented by its ambassador to India. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attended. The previous BRICS deputy foreign ministers meeting in April ended without a joint statement after Iran and the UAE clashed over the war. Discussions focused on global governance reform, economic cooperation, and the West Asian crisis. A joint statement from the meeting remained uncertain.
Strategic interpretation
China's decision to prioritize the Trump-Xi summit over the BRICS meeting signals that Beijing views bilateral U.S. relations as more strategically important than multilateral bloc diplomacy at this moment. The bloc's inability to issue joint statements on the Iran war reveals deep internal fractures — particularly between Iran and the UAE — that undermine BRICS's claim to speak with a unified voice on global security. India's challenge as chair is to prevent these divisions from paralyzing the bloc ahead of the September summit.