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Recently, Iran applied to join BRICS, a group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On a global level, this forum represents 40% of the world population and 26% of the world economy. According to IMF data, China has the largest economy in this grouping and accounts for more than 70% of the BRICS total worth of around $27.5 trillion, while India comes in second at 13% and Russia and Brazil comprise the remaining 7%.
Now with Iran’s entry, more value will be added to BRICS as it holds around a quarter of the Middle East’s oil reserves and second-largest global gas reserves. Invited to a virtual meeting of the BRICS summit, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has delivered a speech expressing Iran’s readiness to share its vast capabilities and potential to help the BRICS countries attain their goals.
Around the same time that Tehran joined, two-day talks in Doha to resuscitate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal between Iran and the United States ended without any positive result. Apparently losing hope of normalizing its ties with the Western bloc, Iran could be exploring alternate options to strengthen its economic under the current U.S. sanctions, Al-Monitor wrote.
Since joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) last year, this participation in BRICS is Iran’s second step toward the East. Feng Xingke, secretary-general of the World Financial Forum and director of the Center for BRICS and Global Governance, told the Global Times that including Iran in BRICS will mean closer and more effective channels between resources and markets, which will benefit all members.
Discussing the motive behind this move, Hamidreza Azizi, CATS Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security
Affairs in Berlin, told Al-Monitor, “The Rouhani administration … believed that having normal relations with the West is the key to expanding relations with the East and vice versa. But since President Raisi took over last year, Iranian foreign policy has increasingly become anti-Western in the traditional sense of the word.”
Consequently, he said, “Iran’s moves to join different non-Western groupings, from SCO to BRICS, are presented as the inevitable path the country needs to take in a world in which — as the narrative goes — the West is experiencing a political, economic and moral decline. In that sense, even the JCPOA if revived is a tactical solution, while Eastward policy is of strategic nature.”
In 2017, a BRICS plus concept was also introduced to link more emerging economies and build consensus on global development, but the group seems to be hampered by these basic factors.
A European diplomat posted in Islamabad told Al-Monitor, “Tehran is aware of the great potential members have to establish an independent financial mechanism to neutralize Western attempts to impose their policies, in particular, to challenge the Swift mechanism, whose availability for Iran on the short/medium term will be strictly linked to the future of the nuclear talks.”
Considering Iran’s chemistry with Beijing and Moscow, Ashok Swain, professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University in Sweden, observed, “Iran will benefit considerably by joining BRICS, as it does not intend to be an ally of the West and its relations with China and Russia are more as a junior ally, not as a competitor. As part of BRICS, there is a lot for Iran to gain, economically and diplomatically.”
Ultimately, BRICS could become a club of the world’s largest energy producers and consumers outside the United States. For a while, the forum has been working on a mutual payment system, credit rating agency, currency bank and reserve mechanism. In this way, member countries might escape U.S. sanctions.
