Iran’s BRICS Membership: “Hello to the New World”?

By Ali Fathollah-Nejad and Amin Naeni

At the 15th annual BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 22–24 August 2023, six new members were admitted into the bloc from 2024 onwards: Argentina, Ethiopia, and four states from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Iran. With this set of new members, BRICS is tilting toward an authoritarian bloc, since the bulk of its new members, especially those from the MENA region are autocratic regimes.

According to reports, more than 40 states had expressed interest in joining the BRICS grouping. It was established in 2009 as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and became BRICS a year later when South Africa joined the grouping. In his address, the host, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, stressed: “Together, the BRICS countries make up a quarter of the global economy, they account for a fifth of global trade and are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population. As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of BRICS, trade between BRICS countries totalled some [US] $162 billion last year. […] Total annual foreign direct investment into BRICS countries is four times greater than it was 20 years ago.” On his part, China’s President Xi Jinping said that this expansion constitutes a starting point for cooperation between members, markedly strengthening BRICS’s collaborative mechanism and bolstering world peace and development.

With the new additions, the bloc will be representing half of the global population. Also, the extended group that may be labelled “BRICS+”/ “BRICS plus” from next year on will include the world’s largest hydrocarbon energy consumer—China—and the world’s largest energy producer—Saudi Arabia.

A core topic during the Summit was the bloc’s aspiration towards de-dollarisation, which was recently affirmed by the head of the New Development Bank (NDB)— BRICS’s “central bank”— former Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, in an interview with China’s state broadcaster CCTV.

In fact, it was initially planned that BRICS would first develop a mechanism for admitting new members; thus, the announced additions before this mechanism could be set up seems to have come as a spontaneous move. Put differently, the admissions were reportedly pushed by individual states; for instance, Egypt’s admission was pushed by fellow African state South Africa, and Iran by Russia and perhaps China.

This article will focus on the admission of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the latter’s motivation to gain access to the BRICS bloc, Iranian receptions, as well as implications thereof.

Iran’s admission into BRICS

It is widely assumed that Tehran’s membership was pushed by Moscow and at least welcomed by Beijing, in a bid to strengthen their abilities to circumvent United States (US)-led sanctions, in particular, and pressure, in general.

For Iran, the upcoming BRICS membership is a propaganda success par excellence for several reasons: Firstly, it fortifies Tehran’s stated goal to become an integral part of a non-Western, new world order primarily led by China and Russia, while strengthening its view that the West is in ultimate decline. Secondly, through the admission, Iran can proclaim that it continues to be successful in withstanding US pressure, without having to offer concessions to Washington or the West. For Tehran, as a result of both elements, admission into BRICS is a powerful confirmation of its “Look to the East” geopolitical outlook and, in this vein, of its confrontational stance vis-à-vis the West.

This view is reflected in the reactions from Iranian officials and major regime outlets. President Ebrahim Raisi stated that his country’s integration into the bloc signifies a historical achievement. In Iran, the ultra-fundamentalist daily paper Kayhan featured the news on the front cover, with the title “Without JCPOA and FATF: Iran’s BRICS Membership is a Shot at U.S. Sanctions”. In other words, Tehran would not have to concede on its nuclear programme nor meet international standards regarding terrorism financing and money laundering. Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated Javan daily’s first-page reaction reinforced the Iranian leadership’s perception of an emerging global order: “Hello to the New World” (Salâm bar jahân-e jadid).

What remains certain is that Tehran views the BRICS membership as another foreign policy success after 1) its full membership into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) this July; 2) the China-mediated détente with regional rival Saudi Arabia this past March; 3) the deal with Washington involving the unfreezing of US$10 billion of frozen Iranian assets; and 4) the concomitant certainty that it won’t have to fear substantial costs from the West even as it brutally cracks down on anti-regime protests at home or rapidly advances its nuclear programme.

Potential complications

On paper, the BRICS expansion constitutes a milestone towards elevating the grouping’s geoeconomic and geopolitical standing, thus marking a significant qualitative shift towards the creation of a non-Western, multipolar world order.

Despite the triumphalism surrounding the BRICS’s expansion as well as Iran’s admission, there are potential complications towards a linear development of a non-Western world order. First, even in Iran, there is scepticism towards the rosy scenarios offered by the regime. For instance, Iran’s reformist daily Ham-Mihan published an interview with Tehran University international relations professor Alireza Soltani, who argued against the notion that Iran’s economic and developmental challenges would be resolved solely through BRICS membership.

He emphasised that the belief in such a notion is misplaced and unrealistic, stating that BRICS involvement will not singlehandedly tackle the complex woes that Tehran faces. In fact, this argument is based on the realisation that without Western sanctions relief and an improvement of relations with the West, Iran’s economic crisis cannot be sufficiently resolved within an international banking and financial system still dominated by the US.

Second, BRICS is no NATO or European Union (EU), as it lacks formal organisation—a proper charter, a secretariat, an established criteria for membership, and procedures on expansion; for a long time, it didn’t even have a functioning website.

Third, given the experience with the development of BRIC(S) since its inception a decade-and-a-half ago, there is no guarantee that the group’s lofty aspirations will materialise, be it regarding the redistribution of geoeconomic and geopolitical power or intra-BRICS(+) trade.

Fourth, Iranian foreign policy officials have stated that Tehran’s BRICS membership will render the revitalisation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and similar concessions with the West superfluous. Yet, given that, on 20 August, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi advised his Iranian counterpart to pursue “the full and effective implementation of the JCPOA”, Tehran cannot easily shelve this agreement. The Iranian leadership has demonstrated a strategic resolve to diminish the urgency of the JCPOA’s revival in Tehran. This perspective has developed due to a growing perception that Western pressures, particularly the US sanctions, lack the ability to change the behaviour of the Iranian state. In the immediate context, joining BRICS could bolster this perception, signifying that the Islamic Republic has attained an elevated level of resistance to the imposed political and economic pressure by the West.

Outlook and implications

In the short term, Iran’s prospective membership of BRICS could serve as a catalyst for the regime to bolster its relations with Russia and China. This is because Iran is viewing its membership of BRICS as a tangible outcome of its “Look to the East” strategy.

In the case of China, this membership could lead Iran to provide Beijing with greater concessions and discounts on Iranian oil and enticing incentives for Chinese enterprises to engage with and invest in the Iranian market. In the case of Russia, Tehran may express heightened interest in fostering deeper military collaboration with Moscow and proposing initiatives that counter the isolation imposed by Western powers. An example of such a venture is the planned North–South Corridor—a railway route designed to connect Russia to the Indian Ocean through Iran.

Therefore, Iran would stand to gain notable political advantages at the expense of Western interests in the short-term. However, short-term economic benefits are more challenging as the circumvention of sanctions remains an obstacle. Overall, in the short term, Iran’s achievement is subject to the extent to which the White House is willing to intensify sanctions and augment its deterrent measures against Iran. The current trajectory under the Biden administration appears to be favourable to Tehran.

Furthermore, the diversity of BRICS+ members will weigh heavily on whether the bloc will be able to achieve its tall aspirations. Most importantly, there may an intra-group conflict emerging between those member-states seeking a confrontation with the West, especially Russia, China, and Iran, and those seeking co-existence with the West—Saudi-Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Argentina.

In the longer term, Iran envisions its membership of BRICS as a means to assume a prominent role in shaping the emerging global order. The Islamic Republic seeks to amplify BRICS’s collective opposition to Western powers, facilitating a revisionist stance within the bloc. Although major BRICS members exhibit an interest in a new and redefined global order, the recent expansion challenges this aspiration. The group now encompasses diverse actors with dissimilar political and economic indicators, including significant competitive dynamics among some members. In light of these complexities, it becomes an intricate endeavour for BRICS to establish a central and cohesive role in reshaping the global order. As a result, it poses a threat to the desired world order for the Iranian regime.

Moreover, given the volatility of Middle East geopolitics, it cannot be excluded that major rifts would re-appear between major regional powers. For instance, the Iranian–Saudi détente may prove rather short-lived if Tehran would want to forcefully re-activate its expansive, if not aggressive, regional “Axis of Resistance” beyond a potential short-term interest to de-escalate regional geopolitics to ensure a deal with the US. Upon his 15 August visit to Baghdad, the IRGC’s commander-in-chief Esmail Qaani has urged leaders within the coordination board of the Islamic resistance to “stop all military operations against the US and the global coalition forces at this time”, according to an Iraqi source. In contrast, an eventual revitalisation of the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” may be prompted by a renewed sense of Iranian hubris given the aforementioned series of foreign policy successes and its perception of US weakness, but it may indeed jeopardise the détente with Saudi Arabia as well as alienate China that is interested in stability in the Persian Gulf region due to its energy supply needs.

Ali Fathollah-Nejad is the Founder & Director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order (CMEG) and author of the much-acclaimed Iran in an Emerging New World Order (2021).

Amin Naeni is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) at the Deakin University in Melbourne. He is also a Fellow at CMEG.

Observer Research Foundation

The views in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of scobricsinsight