BRICS summit in India faces unity test as Iran conflict divides the bloc

India is hosting the 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit on September 12-13, 2026, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, and the timing could hardly be more fraught. The bloc that was supposed to represent a cohesive counterweight to Western-dominated institutions is walking into its biggest internal test yet: a shooting war involving one of its own members. The US-led conflict against Iran, which began on February 28, 2026, has turned what was meant to be a showcase of multilateral ambition into a diplomatic minefield. Iran joined BRICS in 2024. So did the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two countries with their own complicated history with Tehran. Putting all three in the same room and asking them to sign a joint declaration about peace and cooperation is, to put it gently, a challenge. The consensus problem A preview of how difficult the summit might be came in May 2026, when BRICS foreign ministers met and failed to produce a consensus statement. Differing views on the conflict, and likely on how much to say about it publicly, left the group without the kind of unified communiqué that summits like these are designed to produce. India, which has chaired the bloc since January 2026, is now scrambling to...