BRICS, Global South, and Iran: Multipolarity and Shifting Power

By Iqbal Jassat

In this analysis, Iqbal Jassat examines the US-Israeli wars on Iran through the lens of BRICS and the emerging multipolar order, arguing that the conflict exposed both the limits of Western dominance and the contradictions within the Global South alliance. Jassat contends that Iran’s resilience has become a key test for de-dollarization, non-alignment, and the credibility of alternative global power structures.

In June 2025, a swift, dramatic confrontation unfolded between Israel and Iran – often called the “Twelve-Day War” – upending regional dynamics and testing the emerging multipolar order.

On June 13, Israel launched its most intense strikes yet on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, and the United States soon joined with its own air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran didn’t sit back. It retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israeli targets, threatening further escalation before a ceasefire was reached on June 24, ending US/Israeli aggression.

This sudden joint US/Israel military attack highlighted how Iran – a member of the BRICS bloc since 2024 – features in a world where the traditional US-led order is increasingly challenged by new power centers.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, within hours of the unprovoked attacks on Iran, a number of governments from the BRICS and broader “Global South” issued statements that revealed both convergence and division among the member states.

As emerging powers, dominant in their limited spheres, the ‘Twelve-Day War’ became a crucible for the nascent multipolar system.

Not only did it expose BRICS’s internal differences, but it also further illustrated how non-aligned states react to a major war and underscored the influence of global economic ties as well as on political allegiances.

While pundits were exploring the Global South’s reaction to the June 24 war, the US and Israel launched a new unprovoked war on Iran at the end of February 28, 2026.

As if testing the waters of multipolarity, the latest sweeping military campaign, codenamed Operation Epic Fury by Washington and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion, unleashed hundreds of strikes within the first 12 hours.

In the absence of any UNSC authorization and yet again, while Iran was in the midst of negotiations, the unprovoked war targeted Iranian missile sites, air defenses, nuclear facilities, and leadership compounds, assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of top officials.

What began as a high-intensity bid to collapse the government and impose regime change saw the assault on Iran evolving into a grinding, multi-week confrontation exceeding 40 days by mid-April.

To the surprise of the world, more particularly military experts, Iran’s amazing resilience came to the fore.

In a remarkable display of defensive prowess, Iran’s retaliation—missile barrages, drone swarms, proxy activations across the region, and a temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz—turned a lightning strike into a sustained geopolitical standoff.

Forced to back off from their unlawful war without attaining any of their declared goals, a fragile two-week ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan and effective from April 8, paused the aggressors with a separate Israel-Lebanon truce following on April 16.

Yet tensions linger, resulting from Trump’s hopelessly ineffective unilateral naval blockade on the movement of ships in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.

To underline US failure regarding its much-hyped blockade of the Strait, the following tweet by Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on April 17 confirmed it:

“In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by the Ports and Maritime Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

These episodes, flowing from June 2025 to the current one, have injected dramatic changes which require situating the wars on Iran by two of the world’s most powerful military and nuclear countries, in a wider historical and geopolitical context.

Overnight, Iran’s regional role in West Asia, as well as being an integral part of BRICS and the Global South in relation to the rise of alternatives to Western dominance, emerged as a dominant force, possessing huge leverage.

Iran has long stood at the heart of Middle Eastern politics. Once an ally of Israel under the Shah (1948–1979), the 1979 Islamic Revolution transformed Iran into a bitter rival. More importantly, under the leadership of Imam Khomeini, Iran emerged as a potent anti-colonial force, marking its departure from the former regime’s close relations with both Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

This exciting period also saw Iran’s incredible solidarity for Palestine’s liberation by inspiring resistance movements known as the “Axis of Resistance”. Hezbollah, being one, is destined to become a major impediment to Israel’s expansionism and occupation of Lebanon.

Iran’s development of a peaceful nuclear program became a flashpoint, leading to international sanctions until Tehran agreed to the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) – from which Washington unilaterally withdrew in 2018.

Against this backdrop, critique of US foreign policy, more specifically its historical conduct of pursuing a doctrine of absolute predation, has become louder and more pronounced.

It highlights major US wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, referring to the genocidal horror of Vietnam, the annihilation of Cambodia, and the systematic slaughter of Koreans, as well as the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The targeted annihilation of Iran has correctly been framed as an illegal violation of sovereignty by the Global South, with echoes of Vietnam. Also, the staged political protests inside Iran have not escaped scrutiny. It has prompted observers to see the uprising as both a continuation of long-term US-Iran enmity and a moment when new international alliances are being tested.

Although the conflicting dynamics within BRICS governments have mixed outlooks on the Iran war, collectively they called for “peace and negotiation”.

On this score, author Azad Essa’s wide ranging probe for Middle East Eye (MEE), elicited interesting responses from a number of analysts.

In essence, the way BRICS responds to the US war on Iran, a permanent member, will have repercussions for how the group is perceived and understood – not only by its own members, but the whole world going forward.

Thus far, the signs are far from encouraging. Touted as a leader of the Global South, BRICS is “nowhere to be found”.

Iran, a permanent member of the grouping of 11 countries, joined BRICS in 2024, when it comprised only the core members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Several other countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, joined between 2024 and 2025.

Writing in The Globe And Mail, Geoffrey York, the paper’s Africa Bureau Chief, agreed the attack on Iran has dealt a blow to the BRICS bloc.

His reasoning is that BRICS had already been undermined this year when three of its members – Indonesia, Egypt and the UAE – agreed to join Trump’s Board of Peace, which supports US policy in the Middle East.

York’s view is echoed by University of Johannesburg professor Patrick Bond, who believes that the Iran war and the Board of Peace memberships have “split the BRICS right in half”.

Bond, who has studied the group since its inception, claims that despite its rhetoric about multilateralism in a multipolar world, “BRICS didn’t really present any counterweight or any threat to the United States, Israel, or to their friends in Europe”.

York also quotes the views of Ofentse Davhie, a research associate at the Johannesburg-based Centre for Risk Analysis, who describes BRICS as a “paper tiger.”

The Iran war shows that the group lacks the capacity for coordinated power projection after failing to sign any internal agreements on trade, economics, or military matters, according to Davhie.

Given Iran’s defensive yet retaliatory attack on the UAE and its US-based military infrastructures, it was the first time that one member of the 11-country organization had fired missiles at another.

Contrary to China’s and Russia’s ambitions for the new partnership, the war on Iran has sharply divided BRICS, exposing its geopolitical fragility, as per York.

A major weak link is India, the current chair of BRICS. Thus far, it has declined to criticize the US/Israeli war on Iran. York reminds us that India even remained mute when a US submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, just after the ship had departed from an exercise with the Indian navy.

We recall that days before the Iran war began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel, met Netanyahu, including top Israeli leaders, and announced a “special strategic partnership” with the country.

“Modi was basically in Israel, hugging Netanyahu and making it very clear that, seemingly, there’s a much stronger solidarity or kinship between these two leaders, and this is going to extend officially into the respective bilateral relations, officially,” Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, told MEE.

India’s pro-Israel stance has proven to be more than a liability for BRICS’ geopolitical strategy.

Singh said that India’s closeness to Israel, as well as Iran’s retaliatory attacks on the UAE, in particular, has likely made it even harder for BRICS to reach a place of consensus.

Essa correctly argued that the bloc has been routinely divided and seemingly paralyzed by differing agendas and a lack of alignment on global issues – from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

But the current military aggression and declared goal to crush and topple the government of a permanent member of BRICS may just be the most damaging to its credibility yet, asserted Essa.

However, any possibility of BRICS collapsing or disintegrating is unlikely, said Bond: “If the BRICS don’t break, it will probably be because for most, their commonality is more powerful, namely corporate profiteering in Israel”.

Bond said BRICS countries’ continued commitment to economic deals with Israel is ultimately likely to “outweigh genuine solidarity with Iran, just as we have seen recently with Venezuela and probably soon in Cuba, too.”

“No BRICS ruling class will come to Iran’s aid when at the same time, their class interests are in Israel’s prosperity, genocide or not,” he said.

“This conflict will have significant repercussions on how the group is perceived and understood, not just by its members, but by the whole international community,” warned Singh.

A crucial question posed by Dr. Ebrahim Harvey, a South African political writer, analyst and commentator, gets to grips with why BRICS has been mute:

“And did BRICS+ say and do enough to make its voice heard loud and clear about the brutal and ongoing war waged by the US and Israel against Iran? I don’t think so. Is it a result of a crucial crossroads? Yes”.

Harvey’s assessment of BRICS aiming to substantially increase its global influence, especially in relation to the West, led by the US, and its economic and financial domination since the late 1940s, informs the strategic significance of BRICS.

He argued that in the context of opposition to global imperialism, led by the US, the birth and growth of BRICS is the most important development since the end of World War II.

But questioned how a coalition with many internal problems, weaknesses, and fractures is going to sustain itself and gain an appreciable momentum in its mission to build a formidable coalition against the Western world and forge a new world order.

Given that Israel and the US have openly defied the authority of the United Nations, a fact which Harvey scathingly described as not having any respect for it, and has been widely evident for many years, provides BRICS the opportunity to challenge the shift in power structures.

Harvey believes that BRICS provides a platform not only for its own vision and mission, but also for wider issues that a new global order must represent.

The reality, however, is that BRICS’s collective silence on the US/Israel war as well as its qualified positions reflect both its loose structure and the very strategy of its members: they coalesce where interests align, but preserve flexibility.

Indeed, analysts comment that BRICS has “not issued a unified position” on Iran’s war because each member “staked out its own stance”, thus eroding the urgent need to boldly proclaim an unqualified commitment to multipolarity.

From economists who have dealt with the de-dollarization agenda related to BRICS, we learn that the dollar is not about to be displaced.

The common understanding shared by many countries in the Global South is largely driven by fear that the US military will “discipline” governments that try to exit the system. Although Iran has defied the system and survived the threat, the BRICS bloc has not.

BRICS will need to acknowledge the profound lessons provided by Iran on the issue of de-dollarization and adopt a shift in paradigm to overcome US bullying and blackmail.

The lesson is that Iran has not been destroyed. Though it has been bombed, sanctioned, and isolated for decades, it has retained enough military capability and geographic leverage to close the most critical oil corridor on earth and charge admission in a rival currency.

We learn too that the terms of the petrodollar system, which were imposed rather than negotiated, are now subject to contest. That is not the same as saying they will be overturned quickly. But a system that could once enforce compliance through the threat of regime change is now operating in a world where that threat has visibly failed.

Nevertheless, political analyst Ashraf Patel’s probe of the current challenges facing the Global South warned that Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran continue to face full-scale aggression and war mongering by an unhinged Trump administration, “ever desperate to extract more resources, minerals, and data from the Global South”.

The BRICS values of sovereignty and law will thus remain of zero consequence if it limits its condemnation of the US-Israeli war to mere rhetoric, without seizing the opening Iran has courageously created to actively pursue a much-needed shift in power structures.

If BRICS reads the radical shift in public opinion, it will find that the unlawful war on Iran has led to a growing assertiveness by civil societies in defining international issues on their own terms.

These voices speak of the war in historical terms – as a form of Western domination. For example, South African scholars warned that in the Global South, this war looks like a 21st-century colonial exercise of power.

If indeed BRICS misreads the war as a mere regional conflict, it will fail to recognize Iran’s dominance as evidence of the decline of US unilateralism and the rise of a more contested, multipolar order.