BRICS 2026 Summit: Joint Declaration Expresses Concern Over Middle East War

Karl Sexton | Felix Tamsut | Midhat Fatimah with AP, AFP, Reuters and local media

Published 09/11/2026Published September 11, 2026

The joint declaration at the BRICS 2026 summit expressed 'deep concern' over hostilities in the Middle East. China's President Xi Jinping said the Iran war was not in the bloc's interest.

Indian PM Modi has announced the adoption of a joint declaration

The BRICS coalition expressed concern over escalations in the Middle East

Modi will meet China's Xi on the sidelines of BRICS today

Putin and Modi discuss a wide range of issues, including the Ukraine-Russia conflict, energy cooperation and trade across several sectors

Modi again urges Putin to end the war in Ukraine

Modi calls for maritime trade to be protected during bilateral talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in New Delhi

Pezeshkian warns Iran coming under 'critical, dangerous' US economic pressure

This blog has been paused. Below is a roundup of some of the top headlines from the BRICS Summit 2026 in India on September 12, 2026:

We are now pausing our coverage of the BRICS summit in New Delhi.

We will be back on Sunday, September 13, with more headlines.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for Beijing to strengthen its financial cooperation with India during a visit to New Delhi for a BRICS summit.

"Both sides should… work hand-in-hand to promote high-quality major financial cooperation, advocate an equal and sustainable global order, and foster an economic globalization that is open and inclusive," Xi said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Foreign Ministry said that he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi "underlined the need to address each other's concerns, including structural trade imbalance and supply chain issues, and facilitation of meaningful and predictable market access."

China is India's largest trading partner, with bilateral goods reaching $151 billion (€130 billion) in the financial year of 2025-26.

During this period, India imported $131 billion of goods from China, while India exported some $19 billion worth of goods to its neighbor.

India and China have "expressed commitment" to normalizing their disputed border, India's Foreign Ministry said.

"The two leaders expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question," the ministry said as Chinese President Xi Jinping visits New Delhi for a BRICS summit.

The ministry added the Prime Minister Narendra Modi "underlined the need for both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border related issues."

"Differences should not become disputes," it said.

The statement said that Modi stressed that China and India both "must be guided by three mutuals — mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest."

Both India and China maintain heavy military deployments along their 3,500 kilometer (2,175-mile) border along Kashmir and Tibet.

Chinese and Indian troops engaged in several skirmishes along the disputed border in 2020 and 2021.

Speaking at the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for greater efforts to promote peace in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

"China is willing to work with fellow BRICS members to play due role in achieving peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region," President Xi Jinping told the official Xinhua news agency in New Delhi.

"The war has caused serious losses to people across the region and does not serve the common interests of the international community," Xi added, according to Xinhua.

Xi also pointed out that power politics are on the rise, the international order is being challenged and there are growing shortcomings in terms of peace and security. The BRICS nations must stand "on the right side of history," he urged.

On the first day of the BRICS Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the adoption of a joint declaration.

The joint declaration adopted by the BRICS coalition calls for "maximum restraint" in the Middle East.

"We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia and, recalling our respective national positions, call for exercising maximum restraint, as well as avoiding actions that could further aggravate the situation," the statement read.

The member states have reiterated their commitment to peaceful resolution of international disputes through dialogue, consultation and diplomacy.

The declaration also advocates for a multilateral approach that respects diverse national viewpoints and positions on crucial global issues.

The declaration comes at a time when the US and Iran have resumed tit-for-tat strikes against each other, after a pause in fighting for much of August.

Since the bloc included Iran and US-ally UAE both, it was expected that reaching a concensus will be difficult.

Additionally, the bloc expressed concerns about the rise of "unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures" that distort trade, against the backdrop of US sanctions against Tehran amid its war with the country, and against Russia over its conflict with Ukraine.

The bloc stressed on the need to cooperate to maintain the smooth flow of global trade, supply chains and energy.

"It’s all done," Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said. And what he meant was this: BRICS has an approved joint declaration for 2026. The leaders agreed on the text of the Delhi Declaration on day one of the summit after their plenary session.

It is important to keep in mind that, for the first six months of the Iran war, the grouping of Global South nations failed to issue a joint statement. The US-Israel-led attack on Iran has put enormous strain on the bloc.

The war directly involves three BRICS members: Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But not as allies. Iran has attacked the UAE and Saudi Arabia, seeing them as proxies for the US.

The war has been devastating for the Global South, which BRICS represents. Think oil and fertilizers — and food security.

The compromise now found in Delhi appears to be a joint declaration condemning unilateral wars, without naming any country.

That is rather low-key — but perhaps better than nothing, especially for BRICS chair India, which can claim this as a diplomatic victory. As former UN diplomat and prominent Indian foreign policy voice Shashi Tharoor had told me before the summit:

"There is very little doubt that all the BRICS members have not necessarily upheld the UN Charter, the inviolability of borders, the sovereignty of member states of the UN, and the inadmissibility of the use of force to settle international disputes."

The BRICS countries now number 11 and represent about half of the world’s population. And when economies are measured by what people can actually buy, they account for around 40 percent of global economic output.

So BRICS leaders feel they have a strong case for criticizing western political hegemony and the dominance of the US dollar. They argue that global institutions such as the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank no longer reflect the rising power of emerging economies and the Global South.

In his opening address, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that reform of the UN Security Council cannot wait any longer.

Speaking during the BRICS Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the Middle East war, sparked by US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, does not serve the world's interests, Beijing's state media reported.

"As the situation in the Middle East and the Gulf region continues to evolve, the war there has caused serious losses to people across the region," state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying in New Delhi, which is hosting the 18th BRICS summit attended by leaders including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

It "does not serve the common interests of the international community", Xi said, according to Xinhua.

In his closing remarks for the first session at the BRICS Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the BRICS group of nations unanimously adopted a joint declaration on Saturday, the first day of their annual summit in New Delhi.

Reuters news agency, citing four anonymous sources, had earlier in the day reported that members of the BRICS coalition have agreed on a joint declaration which does not name any country but will condemn unilateral war by any country.

The members include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

As leaders gather in New Delhi for the 2026 BRICS Summit, talk of "de-dollarization" is everywhere. But Anuradha Mitra Chenoy, Professor and former dean at School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, argues the real story is more modest, and more interesting.

Every BRICS summit now comes with the same headline: is this the moment the bloc finally dethrones the US dollar? For Chenoy, the question itself is the problem.

"The debate is often overstated," she told DW. BRICS countries, in her reading, are not on a mission to replace the dollar. What they are doing is settling more of their bilateral trade in local currencies — a shift that has less to do with ideology than with practicality. It cuts transaction costs, speeds up payments, and makes trade more predictable for businesses that used to route everything through dollars by default.

If there’s a political edge to this trend, Chenoy locates it elsewhere, in how the dollar itself has been used as a tool of coercion. US sanctions, tariffs, and the freezing or outright confiscation of foreign reserves have all pushed countries, particularly across the Global South, to think harder about their exposure to the American financial system.

That calculus matters most for heavily indebted developing economies. By trading directly in local currencies with partners like India, China, Russia, and South Africa, these countries can sidestep some of their need to hold dollars just to settle trade. The payoff, Chenoy says, is twofold. Firstly, lower transaction costs, and secondly, in some cases, less reliance on dollar-denominated debt.

New Delhi has backed greater use of local currencies and cross-border payment mechanisms within BRICS, even as it keeps its economic relationship with Washington firmly intact.

For Chenoy, It’s also not a new one. She points back to the Rupee-Ruble trading arrangement India ran with the Soviet Union decades ago — a reminder that local-currency trade has deep roots in Indian economic policy, long before "de-dollarization" became a buzzword.

Chenoy says what’s actually happening inside BRICS — not a coordinated campaign to topple the dollar, but a pragmatic hedge that countries are spreading their financial risk across more currencies and more systems, one bilateral deal at a time.

Modi met with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed at the BRICS Summit in New Delhi.

The two leaders met at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, where they sought to further strengthen their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

The United Arab Emirates became a full member of BRICS in January 2024, along with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Modi and Sheikh Khaled welcomed the announcement by UAE-based International Holding Company (IHC) to invest in the development of an $11.5 billion (€9.91 billion integrated greenfield aluminium project in Odisha.

The project is expected to be India's largest integrated aluminium investment and position Odisha as a global hub for aluminium manufacturing.

The bilateral meeting between Modi and Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince comes amid growing India-UAE cooperation, particularly in the areas of trade and energy security.

In a post on X, India's Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in the meeting, "the leaders reaffirmed commitment to deepening of the India-UAE Comprehensive Strategic Partnership."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral meetings with the Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed Ali and Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim on the sidelines of the ongoing BRICS Summit.

Modi thanked both the country heads for their participation in the event and reaffirmed mutual cooperation.