Putin, Xi, Pezeshkian land in New Delhi for BRICS summit — SkimNews
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- Vladimir Putin arrived at New Delhi's Palam Air Force Station on Friday for the two-day, 11-member BRICS summit; Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian and China's Xi Jinping are also slated to hold bilateral talks with PM Narendra Modi on the sidelines.
- BRICS, now expanded from its five founding members to include Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, faces a "central fault line" over the US-Israel war on Iran launched in February, according to Observer Research Foundation analyst Harsh V. Pant.
- Pezeshkian's India trip is his first as Iranian president and the first by an Iranian leader in eight years — and the Iran war "will provide a stern test of the (expanded) group's cohesion," per Capital Economics' Shilan Shah.
- India has leaned on Russia for fuel to weather the energy crisis caused by the Iran war, even as Moscow's war against Ukraine grinds on and Delhi maintains cordial ties with both Tehran and Israel.
- Xi Jinping is making his first India visit since 2019 — the biggest step in a cautious thaw between the nuclear-armed neighbors since a deadly military clash along their disputed Himalayan border six years ago.
- BRICS foreign ministers failed to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May, a fragmenting sign that analysts now flag as a "big constraint" on the grouping's earlier expansion-driven momentum.
Why it matters: The expansion BRICS once touted as its signature achievement — bringing in Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — now looks like a "big constraint" on the bloc, analysts tell the article, with the Iran war splitting its 11 members along unreconcilable lines. India sits at the center as the one leader who maintains working ties with Iran, Israel, Russia and the US, putting Modi in the position of trying to broker unity among a fractious coalition whose foreign ministers already couldn't agree on a joint statement in May.
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