Pezeshkian Urges BRICS to Halt US-Israeli Strikes on Iran
SkimNews Take
Iran's call for BRICS to play an "independent role" implicitly recasts existing multilateral frameworks as insufficient, while India's worry over stranded vessels reveals non-combatant economies absorb the supply-chain costs of conflicts they are now recruited to mediate.
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Iranian President Pezeshkian called PM Narendra Modi on Saturday (March 21, 2026) and invoked India's current BRICS presidency, urging it to play an "independent role" in halting attacks by the U.S. and Israel.
- Pezeshkian said the "prerequisite" to ending the war is the "immediate cessation of aggressions by the U.S. and Israel."
- Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said attacks against Iran will "increase significantly" in the coming week, hours after Trump said he was considering "winding down" military operations.
- The U.S. announced it is sending more warships and Marines to the region even as Trump weighed scaling back, while Iran threatened to attack tourist sites worldwide.
- The Trump administration moved to lift sanctions on Iranian oil loaded on ships in a bid to tame soaring fuel prices that had sent the U.S. stock market tumbling.
- The war's death toll has climbed past 1,300 in Iran, over 1,000 in Lebanon, 15 in Israel, and 13 U.S. military members, with millions displaced in Iran and Lebanon.
Why it matters: Pezeshkian's direct pitch to Modi turns India — officially neutral and currently holding the BRICS presidency — into a potential diplomatic broker at exactly the moment the U.S. is sending mixed signals (escalating naval deployments while floating a wind-down) and Israel is publicly promising to intensify strikes. With the U.S. already moving to un-sanction Iranian oil at sea to contain fuel prices, the battlefield and the oil market are now pulling in opposite directions.
Ask SkimNews
