BRICS Summit in Delhi Emerges as Key Venue for New Iran Ceasefire Efforts

Iranian missiles and drones struck Kuwait on September 3, two days after U.S. aircraft targeted roughly a hundred positions along the Strait of Hormuz coast and across western Iran, including a strike that killed five people at a wedding party in Sirik. The confrontation has persisted, with U.S. forces attacking Iranian oil tankers and Iran targeting shipping in and around the Strait. Brent oil trades around $97 a barrel.

On September 12, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will arrive in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, as will Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, together with at least eight of the eleven BRICS heads of state and government. The United Arab Emirates, which has endured Iranian fire for six months, will also be present in the same hall.

Western commentators have dismissed the gathering as a photo opportunity, arguing the bloc is too broad to reach consensus. This view overlooks a crucial fact: every ceasefire negotiated in this conflict so far has been brokered by BRICS members and their partners, not by Washington.

Consider the timeline. On March 31, Beijing and Islamabad issued a five‑point initiative calling for an immediate ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. A week later, Iran accepted a two‑week truce. Direct U.S.–Iranian delegations then convened in Islamabad on April 11—the highest‑level contact of the war—under the mediation of Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif, with his army chief Asim Munir traveling to Tehran twice. The result was the Islamabad Memorandum, signed on June 17 by the parties (including the noted representatives) in Versailles and Tehran, with Qatar, Oman, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt contributing to its implementation. The document comprised fourteen points, provided sixty days of toll‑free passage, pledged to lift the naval blockade within 30 days, and outlined a plan for at least $300 billion in reconstruction and economic development. It expired on August 17 after the two sides interpreted Articles 1 and 5 differently and no mediator could enforce a common text.

The agreement collapsed, but the machinery that built it did not. It remains the only such mechanism produced by this war, and most of its components will be present in a single building in Delhi on September 12.

China’s involvement is noteworthy. Beijing purchases over 80 % of Iran’s exported crude and also buys heavily from Gulf states that Iran has been shelling; its Gulf imports fell 25 % year‑on‑year in March. No other major power is losing money on both sides of the conflict simultaneously. This exposure made its proposals credible in Tehran and tolerable in Abu Dhabi.

This does not absolve China. Chinese firms have supplied Iran with dual‑use components, radar and navigation equipment, and a commercial reconnaissance satellite; Washington claims the list is longer, while Beijing denies the most sensitive items. China has also remained largely silent on the deaths of Kuwaiti and Bahraini civilians and the injury of Qatari civilians caused by Iranian missiles—a real cost to its Gulf standing that the Gulf has taken note of. The argument is not that China has behaved well, but that a mediator with commercial stakes on all sides and no interest in regime change is more usable than one without any skin in the game. Opportunism that yields a signed ceasefire outperforms conviction that yields nothing.

Washington now chooses to produce nothing. The United States has expended nearly 80 % of its THAAD interceptors and essentially all of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles, and its leaders have indicated a preference for near‑total control of the strait over any agreement. Six months in, the conflict is attrition without an apparent end, and the states absorbing the impact are not American. Kuwait has suffered strikes on its airport, refineries, and bases since the war’s first day. Oman brokered compromise shipping lanes. Qatar kept a channel open after being hit itself. These nations are not mere spectators to be arranged around a Chinese or Russian narrative, and any Delhi declaration that treats them as such will falter like the May attempt.

The summit’s economic dimension is the same war by other means. Iranian inflation hovers near 70 % and the IMF expects a contraction exceeding 5 % this year. Bombs contributed, but exclusion from dollar‑based payment infrastructure did more, as it has for Russia, Venezuela, and Afghanistan previously.

That exclusion is now repricing itself publicly. China’s cross‑border payment system recorded a single‑day high of 1.22 trillion yuan (≈ $178.5 bn), and March’s average daily volumes were 50 % above February’s. Standard Chartered’s chief economist for Greater China cited the war as a likely catalyst, primarily through oil settlement. As chair, India is promoting links between members’ fast‑payment systems, including UPI and Pix, alongside work on central bank digital currencies. Sanjay Malhotra, head of India’s central bank, frames the effort as cost reduction rather than confrontation—accurate and astute.

Be honest about scale. The yuan still accounts for less than 3 % of global SWIFT payments, compared with 51 % for the dollar, and CIPS has 1,791 participating institutions versus SWIFT’s 11,000. No displacement will happen this decade. What has shifted is demand. Governments from Jakarta to Pretoria have watched a country bombed amid live nuclear talks while cut off from the rails that would let it sell oil to willing buyers. They are no longer debating whether an alternative appeals; they are pricing its cost.

India’s own experience this year illustrates the point. In February, facing a 50 % tariff wall, New Delhi agreed to stop buying Russian crude, prompting Washington to drop the rate to 18 %. Bilateral pressure works, as it always does against a single country. Shared infrastructure is the only response to that arithmetic, and Narendra Modi, chairing under a banner about building resilience, must show the bloc can deliver something a tariff cannot take back.

When foreign ministers met in May, they broke up without a joint statement because Iran’s Abbas Araghchi wanted the bloc to name American and Israeli aggression, but the Emiratis refused to sign. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation faced no such trouble in Bishkek on September 1, where a declaration condemning strikes on Iran passed unanimously. Bishkek was easy because no one in the room represented the opposing side. Delhi is hard for the same reason it matters.

Set the bar where it belongs. A navigation understanding initialled by Iran alongside the UAE and Oman would do more to lower war‑risk premiums than another month of strikes on Larak Island. Reconstruction funds lifted from the defunct memorandum and carried by a grouping representing 40 % of world output at purchasing‑power parity are harder to dismiss as Kremlin messaging than the same offer from Moscow alone. A dated timetable on payment linkage would signal to the Global South that the alternative is under construction, not merely under discussion.

Washington has stated its terms: control of the strait on its own conditions, indefinitely. Delhi is where everyone else gets a turn to answer.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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