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BRICS leaders convene in New Delhi amid Iran war

September 12, 2026

Modi welcomed Putin, Xi, Pezeshkian and the rest of the BRICS heads of government to New Delhi on Saturday to talk commerce, capital flows and the wars abroad.

BRICS is a bloc of emerging and developing economies whose Chinese and Russian participants see it as a counterweight to Western and especially U.S. dominance; India is hosting this summit in New Delhi.

Key facts

NPR reports that the grouping's leaders gathered Saturday in the Indian capital, with commerce, capital flows and the wars abroad at the top of the agenda and the bloc pressing for more say in what gets decided on behalf of poorer and fast-growing economies. Modi welcomed Putin, Xi and Pezeshkian plus the heads of the eight remaining members. What the leaders intend to work through runs from currency arrangements and power supplies to grain, chips, shipping routes and an overhaul of the big multilateral bodies. Pezeshkian pressed the case for members settling more of their commerce in one another's currencies. Bloomberg, Reuters, The New York Times, the Associated Press and France 24 give the same account of who came and what they came to discuss. Beijing's foreign ministry, through spokesperson Mao Ning, said Friday that Xi would take up the large questions of the day and how the members might work more closely together.

The war hangs over the room. NPR reports that the fighting began with American and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28 and that worry is building over it spreading, with Riyadh and the Houthi movement in Yemen also pulling further apart; Bloomberg and The New York Times carry that reading too. Bloomberg puts Xi in the foreground of the New Delhi gathering as the fighting worsens. The New York Times connects climbing crude prices to the fact that Tehran sits with these leaders and not with Washington. The Associated Press and France 24 frame the days in Delhi as a strain on the grouping from the fighting and from friction with Washington. Both Beijing and Moscow, NPR reports, see the grouping as leverage against Western and above all American sway, and as a way of binding poorer and fast-growing economies closer; New Delhi, for its part, has held onto warm relations with Moscow and Tehran while pushing talks as the way out of conflicts and courting Washington and Europe at the same time. Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Associated Press and France 24 set out that balancing act as well.

What is unfinished is the paperwork. NPR reports that the real measure of the hosts here is whether every capital signs a single text, and the Associated Press and France 24 make the same point; it is not a given, since the members' foreign ministers could not close one in May over the fighting in Iran, leaving the hosts to publish their own summing-up in its place. The accounts part ways on where that effort now stands: one already has a shared communique settled, resting on people who were not named, while in the rest it is still the open question of the week. Firm, then: who is in the room, the subjects before them, and the fighting that frames it all. Not firm: the language the leaders walk away with, and whether Modi and Xi hold the sit-down NPR and Bloomberg report is pencilled in for later Saturday, which could carry further the easing between the two capitals since their standoff along the shared boundary in 2020.

Still developing

The joint statement India is trying to secure has no confirmed text: one account has the bloc already agreed on a joint declaration on unnamed sourcing, while others still describe securing one as the test facing India after foreign ministers failed to agree in May. The Modi-Xi talks expected later Saturday, and what they yield for the thaw after the 2020 border tensions, are also unconfirmed.

How settled the reporting is

Reported 100% · Contested 0% · Developing 0%

Sources