BRICS adopts a New Delhi Declaration after a 4 a.m. fight over Iran

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the 18th BRICS summit on Saturday that the New Delhi Declaration 2026 was adopted because no member had objected. Negotiators had worked until about 4 a.m. to close a text that almost every capital could live with. The remaining fight, Indian officials said on Friday night, sat in a single paragraph on the war that the United States and Israel opened with Iran, and on Iranian strikes against sites in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in West Asia.

The published language settled on process words. Reuters reported that the declaration restated a commitment to settle disputes through dialogue, consultation and diplomacy, called for conflict prevention that addresses root causes, and recorded concern about rising nuclear danger. It also criticised unilateral tariffs and other measures that it said distort trade and sit outside World Trade Organization rules. Cross-border payments among BRICS members stay on the work list rather than arriving as a finished system.

Modi said the document gives "clear direction" to shared goals and that the technology of the future should not be written only by the old centres of power. He stood for photographs between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at Bharat Mandapam. The guest list also included Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim, Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed, Egypt's Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Vietnam's Le Minh Hung. Antonio Guterres, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Dilma Rousseff and AIIB chief Zou Jiayi attended as well.

India's chair theme is "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability." The grouping is marking twenty years since its first cycle. Expansion has made consensus slower. Iran's presence at the table, in the middle of a war with Washington, is the clearest example. Pezeshkian is on his first presidential visit to India. Xi is back in Delhi after seven years, a public signal after the 2020 clash in the Himalayas.

Putin used his speaking slot to back India's claim to a larger role at the United Nations Security Council. He said a unipolar order is "fading into history." Modi had called for Council reform in the same session. Those lines cost Russia little and give India a quote it can recycle. They do not move a Council seat.

What the declaration does not do is name the United States as a party to the Iran war or bless Tehran's hold on the Strait of Hormuz. That omission is the price of unanimity. Gulf partners sitting as guests, and members that still trade heavily with the West, were not going to sign a charging document. Iran and its closer partners were not going to sign a text that treated the war as Tehran's doing alone. The early-morning compromise left both complaints in the corridor.

Payments language is the other piece that will be read in finance ministries. BRICS has talked for years about settling trade without the dollar. Encouraging "practical solutions" is a holding phrase. It keeps working groups alive. It does not announce a clearing union.

The summit runs into Sunday. Bilateral meetings will fill the gaps the communique left. Modi has already seen Pezeshkian and called for a diplomatic end to the West Asia war. The photograph with Xi and Putin is the image India wanted from the chair year. The 4 a.m. paragraph is the part that shows how the chair year actually works.