BRICS adopts the New Delhi Declaration after an all-night Iran-UAE bargain

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the opening session of the 18th BRICS Summit on 12 September that no member had raised an objection. The New Delhi Declaration 2026 was adopted unanimously. That sentence closed a negotiation that Indian officials said ran until about 4 a.m. the same morning.

The grouping now has 11 members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Consensus is the operating rule. Any one capital can block a joint text. Ministerial meetings earlier in 2026, including the foreign ministers' session in May, failed to produce a statement because Iran and the UAE would not accept the same language on the war in West Asia.

Iran wanted language close to what the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation had used, condemning the United States and Israel for opening the war with strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader. The UAE wanted equal condemnation of Iranian attacks on Gulf neighbours. Sudhakar Dalela, India's sherpa and Secretary (Economic Relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs, said the compromise came through months of line-by-line talks and then a last night of work in Delhi. Officials said Modi also spoke directly with the leaders of Iran, Russia and the UAE to lock the wording.

The agreed paragraphs express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in the Middle East and call for maximum restraint and the avoidance of actions that could worsen the situation. They also register concern about deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and on peaceful nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. The text does not name the United States, Israel, Iran or the UAE in those passages. It makes no separate, named reference to Russia's war in Ukraine.

On the same day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, at Bharat Mandapam. It was the highest-profile encounter between the two countries since the war began on 28 February. Iran and the UAE also signed a joint statement urging restraint. Modi, after a separate meeting with Sheikh Khaled, called India-UAE ties a sign of stability in a period of uncertainty in West Asia. He also held bilateral sessions with the leaders of Ethiopia, Vietnam and Malaysia on the sidelines.

Trade language in the document is less evasive. Members voiced serious concern at the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures that they say sit outside World Trade Organization rules. The declaration treats indiscriminate tariff increases, and protection framed as environmental policy, as a threat to supply chains and to development. It also condemns unilateral coercive measures as violations of international law, calls for an end to the blockade of Cuba, and ties regional security to the smooth flow of global trade, supply chains and energy.

That last clause is the closest the text comes to describing the shipping crisis. Iranian pressure on routes through the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi advances at the Bab el-Mandeb have already cut Saudi crude supply. The International Energy Agency put Saudi output in August at 6 million barrels a day, the lowest in more than three decades. Oil has been trading above $100 a barrel in the same week. A declaration that refuses to name combatants still names the commercial effect.

Other operative points stretch across 140 paragraphs. Leaders backed a larger role for India and Brazil at the United Nations and said reform of the Security Council can no longer wait. They called for a woman to be chosen as the next UN Secretary-General. They rejected a common BRICS currency. They promised faster work on local-currency settlement and cross-border payments, and they restated support for resilient critical mineral supply chains. On Palestine, the text asks that policies aimed at forced displacement from Gaza be halted and repeats that a lasting settlement depends on the rights of the Palestinian people. A counter-terror passage calls terrorism criminal and unjustifiable. Indian officials said language on the Pahalgam attack was part of that file.

The summit theme under India's chairship is Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. China takes the chair in 2027 and will host the 19th summit. Leaders still in Delhi on 13 September include Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Pezeshkian, Cyril Ramaphosa, Prabowo Subianto, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Abiy Ahmed. Xi's bilateral with Modi on Saturday produced no new map deal. It did repeat the line that differences should not become disputes and put market access next to border calm.

The practical test is whether a text that names almost no combatant can change behaviour. Iran and the UAE are in the same family photograph and on the same document. Ships in the Gulf and the Red Sea will show whether that is diplomacy or a pause in the argument. The second day of the summit is 13 September at Bharat Mandapam. The declaration is already on the record. Implementation is not.