Invest2 publishers3 min readPublished
Blame-free wording buys BRICS the Iran-UAE consensus its foreign ministers missed in May
The bloc's leaders adopted a Middle East paragraph that assigns responsibility to no country, and both Iran and the UAE signed it four months after their foreign ministers could not agree on any text at all.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- BRICS leaders unanimously adopted a joint statement, the New Delhi Declaration, on the first day of their 18th summit on the 12th, according to Reuters and other outlets.
- On the Middle East the text expressed deep concern over continuing escalation and urged maximum restraint, without assigning responsibility to any specific country, the United States and Iran included.
- A BRICS foreign ministers' meeting in May had produced no joint statement at all, because Iran and the UAE could not agree.
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Why it matters
- precedent A text that names no party is now the bloc's demonstrated route to unanimity, so the next quarrel between two members gets drafted down to the same level of attribution.
- exposure Washington now has a UAE signature to raise with Abu Dhabi on a line read as aimed at its own Iran sanctions.
- constraint With no channel, fund or date attached, the paragraph commits members to a view and leaves every designation in force.
- contradiction Seoul Economic Daily treats the trade paragraph as sharpened pushback against Washington while Semafor sees the same summit as India balancing between powers, and enforcement follows differently depending on which one is right.
Four months separated the two attempts [16]. The difference between them is attribution: in May the ministers had to write about a fight between two of their own members and produced nothing [5]. In Delhi the leaders wrote about the same conflict and did not name either side [3].
The sanctions line is built the same way. The leaders stressed their opposition to unilateral sanctions that violate international law [6], and Seoul Economic Daily reads that as aimed at both US sanctions on Iran and the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after the war in Ukraine [7]. One sentence covering two members' grievances asks neither of them to concede. The trade language is more specific, with serious concern over the growing use of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures that distort trade and run counter to WTO rules [8].
Neither account describes a settlement channel, a fund or a date attached to any of it [17]. Nothing in it obliges a signatory to do anything.
The conduct that would test a sanctions regime is bilateral. Semafor reports that India, this year's chair [9], has long sought to deepen relations with the US but is unlikely to meet Washington's demands to curb its relations with Moscow [13]. It is also reportedly set to propose a strategic economic dialogue with Beijing [14].
Xi Jinping's business in Delhi was bilateral too. The trip was his first to India in seven years, about a year after he met Narendra Modi in Tianjin [10]. Xi said China and India are cooperative partners and not rivals, and proposed managing the border issue alongside bilateral relations while expanding economic and people-to-people exchanges [11]. He and Modi told Vladimir Putin they were willing to play a mediating role in resolving the situation in Ukraine [12].
The two accounts do not sit easily together. Seoul Economic Daily has the trade paragraph sharpening the bloc's pushback against Washington [18]. Semafor has the Delhi talks pointing to India's attempt to balance ties with global powers [19], and sets that beside Canada strengthening ties with European and African nations, Qatar's prime minister visiting China, and Vietnam's leader visiting Russia, France, the US and Canada this month [15].
In my view the blameless formula holds, because attribution is the one thing two members that have clashed militarily several times cannot both sign [4]. The counter-thesis has a real basis: the UAE put its name to a line read as aimed at US sanctions on Iran [7], and if that survives the next exchange of fire, the bloc's cohesion is worth more than the drafting cost implies. A named instrument with a number on it, or a member publicly declining to enforce a specific designation, would settle which of those it is.
What to watch
- The next Iran-UAE military exchange, and whether the bloc's next text names a party or goes silent as the May ministerial did.
- Whether the strategic economic dialogue India is reported to be proposing to Beijing arrives with terms and a date.
- Whether any member follows the sanctions paragraph by declining to enforce a specific designation.