Brazil’s BRICS agenda may be hard to accomplish after the Iran–Israel war

Brazil wants to pursue an important multilateral agenda. But an expanded membership’s reaction to the war may tilt the group away from Rio’s long-standing goals.

Expert comment Published 2 July 2025 4 minute READ

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Senior Research Fellow for Latin America, US and the Americas Programme

On 6-7 July the founding BRICS member countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will convene in Rio de Janeiro, joined by the full freshman class of new ‘BRICS+’ members: Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE – and Iran. 

Coming just after the Israeli and US bombing of Iran, the summit will present the first real test of the coalition. BRICS has been touted as a forum for emerging economies to exert collective pressure for inclusive global governance reform, and Brazil wants to champion that mission. 

But the Iran–Israel war – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – will likely create dangerous distractions to an effective summit outcome along the lines that Brazil had hoped when it assumed the bloc’s presidency.

Brazil’s position

Brazil has its own broader ambitions for the meeting. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government hopes to consolidate the country’s position as a leader both within BRICS, and among Global South states seeking democratization of the international system. 

Indeed, the summit comes as part of a busy 12 months for Brazil on the international stage. On 18–19 November 2024, Rio hosted the G20 summit, under the theme of ‘Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet’.  And from 10–21 November 2025 the northern Brazilian city of Belém will bring together COP30, the UN’s climate change conference.

Can a heterogenous BRICS+ grouping…promote Brazil’s brand of democratic multilateralism, respect for international law and measured reform of the international system?

The doubleheader of hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 was described as Brazil’s global ‘coming out party’. This round of international summits in 2024 and 2025 is an opportunity to project Brazil’s image as a leading advocate for rebalancing the international order and issues relating to climate change, social justice, and multilateralism.  

The question is: can the BRICS grouping still serve as a forum to advance Brazil’s longstanding goals?

An Expanding Global Brand

How the expanded BRICS+ members in Rio respond next week to the Israeli-US attacks on Iran will provide a sense of direction for the group.  

At 2023’s South Africa summit, quiet tension among the collection of the original members emerged when the group voted to expand membership to Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.  

At the time, observers and the more democratic members of the coalition privately expressed concern that the additions, many of them advocated by China, were made too fast and skewed the bloc towards autocracies.

The risk was the body would be turned into an anti-American forum, doing the bidding of China and Russia. For many, the later 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, hosted by Vladimir Putin, reinforced the perception that the bloc had become a platform to challenge the Western order – even as democratic Indonesia joined the group.

Now comes the test: can a heterogenous BRICS+ grouping collectively and constructively promote Brazil’s brand of democratic multilateralism, respect for international law and measured reform of the international system? And can it serve as the fulcrum to facilitate the global rebalancing of economic, diplomatic, and normative power Brazil wants?  

Much will hinge on whether the group can move beyond emptily opining on the Israel–US–Iran and Russia–Ukraine wars, to issues of more lasting, institutional consequence. Officially, Brazil is hoping to guide discussion toward concrete themes: the green energy transition, cooperation on vaccines, and expanding most-favoured nation status to all countries in the World Trade Organization.  

New additions to the organization have skewed BRICS+ towards countries that do not share Brazil’s broad vision of reforming the global institutional and normative order.

Those are relevant and important projects. They are especially urgent in the wake of moves by the administration of US President Donald Trump: ending US collaboration on global climate change, pulling out of the World Health Organization (taking with it approximately 15 per cent of funding for the multilateral body), and unilaterally imposing (and capriciously adjusting) tariffs in violation of many trade agreements.   

But it won’t be easy to find common ground. 

New additions to the organization have skewed BRICS+ towards countries that do not share Brazil’s broad vision of reforming the global institutional and normative order and instead prioritize their own narrow interests. 

Iran has announced that it will send a delegation, as will Russia. Their presence risks dragging the summit away from Brazil’s agenda towards issuing statements in defence of national sovereignty – a theme pointedly skirted before by BRICS member states when raised in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

World Cup 2014 or Olympics 2016 Redux?

Whatever rhetorical acrobatics emerge from the Rio BRICS+ public statement next week, discussions – in public and private – will reveal the complexities of making an effective body out of a quickly and ambitiously expanding bloc of countries dedicated to inclusivity and global norms. 

BRICS was an unwieldy group before it opened its membership – even if the stated goals of the emerging-economy alliance were initially laudable and long-overdue. 

While UN Security Council expansion was once a stated goal, China was always likely to block India’s accession to the body. Brazil’s commitments to reduce carbon emissions were also likely to collide with Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UAE’s oil- and gas-based economic interests (though Brazil has doubled down on oil production and exports despite its public rhetoric over climate change). 

Extension of most favoured nation status outside the WTO is likely an easier diplomatic lift. But it’s not a counterbalance to the US’s unilateral, erratic tariff policies and efforts to weaken the WTO institutionally.  

It has also become an increasingly challenging proposition for the BRICS+ meeting to advance the group’s goals without alienating the existing guardians of the liberal international order, including the US, UK, EU and Australia.

The Trump administration appears openly opposed to many of the original principles underpinning BRICS. That includes not just addressing climate change and cooperation on democratizing multilateral institutions, but also shoring up global trade rules. 

Existing perceptions of Western irresponsibility and exceptionalism have been sharpened by the US’s bombing of Iran and Europe’s muted reaction to the strikes, making it difficult for BRICS+ member countries to remain silent on the issue next week. 

On the sidelines of official discussions…Brazil may be able to work with democratic member states… that share a broader vision.

In the end, for Brazil one of the best things to come out of the BRICS+ summit could occur on the sidelines of official discussions. Brazil may be able to work with democratic member states, such as India, Indonesia, and South Africa that share a broader vision of global affairs, including managed trade (if not free trade) and the need for inclusive reform of the global order on the matters championed by Brazil. 

With a sharper focus on its longstanding diplomatic goals and a recognition of the limits of the wider BRICS+ grouping, Brazil can lay the groundwork for meaningful collaboration with a sub-set of more constructively engaged partners – at the summit and in other international forums.

That could prove the most realistic and productive approach. Brazil may come to consider this repeated period in the international spotlight as a triumph – akin to its Olympics triumph of 2016, (where it won a record number of medals) – rather than a depressing low point of 2014’s World Cup semi-final.