No equal talks under siege: The contradiction at the heart of US policy on Iran

by Jenny Williams

A person waves Iranian flah in front of a giant banner as daily life continues amid ongoing tensions between the United States in Tehran, Iran, on August 6, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

The latest direct exchange of attacks between the United States and Iran has returned the region to an old and dangerous rhythm: Washington fires, threatens further punishment and then leaves the word “diplomacy” hovering above the wreckage. At almost the same moment, Tehran has again placed a negotiated route on the table. The contradiction could hardly be starker. Talks conducted beside missile strikes and an economic siege do not offer peace on equal terms. They extend war into the negotiating room.

The administration presents sanctions as leverage, as though they were a clean instrument that pressures officials without touching families. Its own documents tell a less sanitised story.

The White House has directed US agencies to intensify economic pressure and drive Iran’s oil exports towards zero. In May, the Treasury Department went further and openly described this policy as a “blockade”. That is not the language of patient diplomacy. It is the language of organised deprivation.

Nor does the pressure stop at America’s borders. Washington has warned foreign financial institutions that dealings connected to Iranian oil may expose them to secondary sanctions. In practice, this forces banks, insurers, ports, shipping companies and trading partners to choose between ordinary commerce with Iran and access to the US financial system. American power thus becomes a global checkpoint, controlling transactions between countries that have not authorised Washington to police their trade.

Sanctions may begin in a Treasury office, but they end in pharmacies, factories, kitchens and pay packets. When banks fear penalties, even lawful payments become difficult. Importers struggle to finance medicine and medical equipment. Producers pay more for machinery, components and raw materials. Food costs rise as transport, insurance and currency pressures accumulate. A humanitarian exemption on paper offers little comfort when no bank will process the payment needed to use it.

A blockade does not become humane because spreadsheets, licence forms and risk models administer it instead of soldiers at a border. Its violence is quieter, but no less deliberate.

This is not speculation. A UN special rapporteur found that unilateral sanctions and over-compliance had obstructed access to medicines and medical equipment, affected food security and placed disproportionate burdens on vulnerable people in Iran. The International Court of Justice had already ordered the United States to remove impediments affecting medicines, foodstuffs, agricultural goods and civil aviation safety. Washington’s insistence that humanitarian goods remain technically exempt cannot answer the evidence that the surrounding financial restrictions make those exemptions unreliable.

The moral evasion rests on a fiction: that an economy can be crushed without crushing the people who live inside it. Oil revenue pays wages, sustains public services, supports production and supplies foreign currency for essential imports. Restrict the revenue, freeze financial channels and intimidate buyers, and the shock inevitably travels through the whole society. When civilian pain becomes the mechanism intended to extract political concessions, “targeted pressure” approaches collective punishment in everything but name.

The government that acts in my name cannot outsource responsibility to a sanctions notice or a bank compliance department. If Washington knowingly creates the conditions in which lawful trade becomes commercially impossible, it owns the predictable consequences.

It cannot celebrate falling revenue as proof of success, then treat rising prices, medicine shortages and lost livelihoods as accidental side effects. Those outcomes form part of the leverage. That is precisely why the policy is indefensible.

History also exposes the strategic failure. Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018 and replaced reciprocal commitments with maximum pressure. The International Crisis Group later documented that the campaign inflicted severe economic damage without producing a new agreement. Repeating that method, now alongside direct military attacks, does not strengthen diplomacy. It teaches Iran that Washington regards agreements as temporary pauses while coercion remains permanent.

Iran’s stated position makes the available alternative plain. President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that Iran will reciprocate immediately if the United States returns to its commitments under the June memorandum. That is a concrete diplomatic opening based on mutual performance. It also reveals the central obstacle: not the absence of a path to talks, but Washington’s refusal to leave behind the assumption that it may negotiate while bombing, blockading and dictating the economic conditions of everyday life.

A credible American approach would cease military attacks, honour existing commitments and lift the measures that obstruct oil sales, banking and lawful civilian trade. It would treat reciprocal compliance as the basis of an agreement rather than as a concession to be extracted under duress. Most importantly, it would recognise Iranians as people with rights, not pressure points on a policy chart.

Diplomacy cannot share a table with siege and remain diplomacy. If Washington genuinely wants an agreement, it must choose persuasion over punishment and reciprocity over domination. Peace begins when the threat to make an entire society pay no longer serves as America’s opening offer.

The broken illusion: US fails to subdue Iran in war

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Washington said the war would force Iran to surrender. Instead, after months of strikes, US officials now warn of rising costs, depleted missile stocks, and an Iran that remains strong.

A war becomes a victory for a great power when it can achieve the objectives it set for starting it; inflicting damage or carrying out extensive attacks alone is not a sign of victory. Now, the more time passes since the start of America's war against Iran, the more the gap between the victory narrative in Washington and the reality on the ground becomes apparent.

America's failed war against Iran has gradually turned into a domestic issue in the United States. What was initially supposed to be a display of Washington's power and proof of its ability to impose its will on Tehran is now facing serious questions about the human, military, and economic costs of the war. Under such circumstances, opposition to the Trump administration's policies is no longer raised only by foreign critics, but a number of American politicians are also warning about the results of this war.

Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, pointing to the consequences of the war against Iran, has presented a picture of the costs that, according to him, the United States has incurred as a result of this conflict. Murphy announced that 18 Americans have been killed, billions of dollars in damage have been inflicted on US bases, and the country's missile stockpiles have been severely depleted. He also pointed to the economic pressures on American farmers and the rise in gasoline prices to around five dollars; an issue that shows the consequences of the war no longer remain confined to military bases and the battlefield, but have spread into the daily lives of American society.

But the most important part of Murphy's remarks is not his reference to casualties and damages, but his assessment of Iran's situation. The American senator has stressed that Iran is "stronger than ever" and that Trump, in contrast, has become dangerously delusional. These words in effect constitute a direct blow to the US government's narrative about the outcome of the war; a narrative that tries to present extensive military strikes as equivalent to victory.

The main problem with this narrative is that victory in war cannot be measured solely by the number of attacks, the amount of bombs used, or the damage inflicted on the opposing side's infrastructure. The real criterion is the achievement of political and military objectives. If the goal of the war was to weaken Iran, destroy its capacity for resistance, and force Tehran to accept Washington's demands, then Iran's continued ability to confront, respond, and rebuild its capacities shows that these objectives have not been achieved.

On the other hand, the United States has paid considerable costs to continue this war. The depletion of missile stockpiles, increased pressure on military bases, American casualties, and the economic effects of the war are all part of the cost Washington must pay to continue the conflict. These costs become even more significant when the opposing side still retains the ability to continue the war. In a war of attrition, the issue is not only who has inflicted more damage; the decisive question is who has greater capacity to absorb the blows and keep going.

This is where Trump's claim of victory faces a serious challenge. The US government can speak of the success of military operations and the damage inflicted on Iran, but if these operations have not been able to deter Tehran from continuing its resistance, the final result will fall far short of the classic definition of victory. Military victory must ultimately lead to a lasting political achievement; otherwise, large-scale attacks may simply turn into a cycle of attrition that imposes costs on both sides.

From this very perspective, Murphy's remarks gain greater significance. He is effectively drawing the attention of American public opinion away from images of attacks and displays of military power toward the bill for the war. A bill that includes human casualties, the consumption of weapons stockpiles, damage to bases, economic pressure, and the rising cost of living for the American people. When such costs are set alongside the failure to achieve the war's primary objectives, the question about the real success of these operations becomes unavoidable.

In this context, the claim that "Iran has become stronger" should also be examined within the same framework. Power does not mean merely an increase in the number of military equipment. The ability to maintain political cohesion, continue economic activity, rebuild defensive capacities, preserve the ability to respond, and most importantly, prevent the enemy from imposing its political will are all part of a country's power in wartime. If Iran, after enduring heavy attacks, still retains the ability to continue the confrontation, this in itself shows that the American strategy has not been able to achieve the result for which it was designed.

In contrast, the United States also faces an important issue: prolonged wars carry costs for Washington far beyond military operations. They consume weapons stockpiles, put forces and equipment at risk, create economic pressure, and can ultimately deepen the political divide within the United States. The longer the war drags on, the more serious this question becomes: whether its achievements have been worth such a cost.

For this reason, the war against Iran cannot be assessed solely through images of attacks and official American statements. The reality on the ground becomes clear when the stated objectives are compared with the actual results. If the United States, despite using its enormous military capacity, has not been able to force Iran to surrender, has not been able to eliminate its capacity for resistance, and has simultaneously faced casualties, depleted weapons stockpiles, and economic pressure, then speaking of victory will be difficult.

America has lost this war; not only because of the heavy costs, but because it has not been able to achieve its primary objectives. The more important issue is that this failure is no longer raised only in the analyses of Washington's opponents. Now the voice of criticism is also being heard from within the American political structure, and politicians like Chris Murphy are warning about the gap between the war's costs and its achievements.

Ultimately, what is collapsing today more than anything else is not just a military strategy, but the illusion of an easy American victory against Iran; an illusion that imagined a country could be forced to surrender through firepower. The reality of the war, however, has shown that real power is not limited to the ability to attack; sometimes more important than that is the ability to stand, to respond, and to keep going. And Iran, at least according to the existing realities, is still standing.

Iran will protect its nuclear facilities: Ex-diplomat

TEHRAN, (MNA) – Iran will protect its nuclear facilities and any attack on them will not deprive the country of its peaceful nuclear capability, a former Iranian diplomat said Monday, dismissing U.S. threats as legally baseless.

Mohsen Pakaein, Iran's former ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Mehr News Agency that U.S. threats against Iran's nuclear programme have no legal or international basis, especially given Iran's membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He said the threats continued because of the silence of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the face of U.S. pressure and the inability of the UN Security Council to confront Washington's threats.

Pakaein said Iran has repeatedly stated that its nuclear programme is peaceful and that Tehran is not seeking to build a nuclear bomb, a point confirmed by the IAEA. "Any American action would be met with a decisive response from Iran," he said.

He said Washington's actions had neither rational logic nor any international legal basis. If attacks on nuclear centres became a practice, he noted, it was the United States and the Israeli regime that would suffer, because both possess nuclear weapons and such actions could have dangerous consequences for regional and international security.

Pakaein said every action the Americans had taken so far had ultimately turned against them. Iran, he added, has repeatedly stated there are no nuclear facilities or programmes at Kuh-e Kolang, and such claims are based on false information spread by the Americans.

India remembers it has a spine

by Junaid S. Ahmad

Leaders attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of State Meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on September 1, 2026. [Iranian Presidency/Handout – Anadolu Agency]

Nations do not usually recover their dignity with trumpets. More often, they rediscover it after humiliation has become so routine that even the bureaucracy begins to feel embarrassed.

At Bishkek, India appears to have suffered such an outbreak of geopolitical self-respect.

Not a revolution. Not a resurrection of Nehru. Narendra Modi has not suddenly begun communing with Bandung or keeping Fanon under his pillow.

But something consequential happened at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit: India joined a declaration condemning military attacks on Iran, defending Iranian sovereignty, affirming Tehran’s nuclear rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, rejecting unilateral coercive measures and insisting that Palestine cannot be permanently buried beneath the rubble of Israeli supremacy.

For today’s India, that is almost radicalism.

For years, New Delhi has performed “strategic autonomy” with the nervous choreography of a client state desperate to appear independent. It buys Russian oil, speaks reverently of multipolarity, invokes civilisational grandeur — then spends extraordinary diplomatic energy ensuring Washington and Tel Aviv are not offended by the grandeur. A civilization-state, apparently, with the emotional needs of a junior partner.

That posture has always been absurd. India has enormous interests in Iran, deep exposure to Gulf instability, historic ties across West Asia and every reason to oppose the principle that powerful states may bomb inconvenient countries into obedience. Yet when Washington and Israel escalated militarily against Iran, India too often sounded like a sedated press release: restraint, dialogue, de-escalation — the vocabulary of states hoping not to be noticed while someone else’s sovereignty is being incinerated.

Bishkek interrupted the performance.

The SCO matters precisely because its members are not ideological comrades. India and Pakistan remain adversaries. India and China remain competitors. Russia brings its own distinct strategic priorities and worldview. This is not an anti-imperial monastery populated by saints in tailored suits.

And yet these states converged on propositions the Western-led order increasingly treats as optional: sovereignty matters; treaty rights cannot be cancelled by geopolitical dislike; sanctions are not international law merely because Washington writes them; and Palestine is not a humanitarian inconvenience to be managed while the Zionist settler colony remains untouched.

The deeper significance is obvious. The Global South is not becoming unified; it is becoming intolerant of tutelage. The old arrangement — Washington defines legality, Europe launders it into elegant prose, Israel receives exemptions, and everyone else is instructed to respect the “rules-based order” — is losing legitimacy and theatrical appeal.

States do not need to adore one another to recognize a rigged table.

For India, this should be instinctive territory. Its stature was once built not merely on size, weapons or markets, but on its ability to speak to Asia, Africa, the Arab world and Latin America without sounding like empire’s local distributor. Colonialism, partition, dispossession and sovereignty were not seminar topics. They were lived memory.

That inheritance was never pure. Nehru’s India was often sanctimonious, inconsistent and self-interested. But it understood something the present establishment frequently forgets: independence is not proven by repeatedly declaring oneself autonomous. It is proven by occasionally telling powerful friends to go to hell.

Bishkek contained the faint sound of India remembering how. And then comes the almost obscene contradiction.

The India rediscovering sovereignty abroad remains busily degrading pluralism at home. The same state that signs declarations about justice and sovereign equality presides over a political culture saturated with Hindutva fascism, violent Islamophobia, repression in Kashmir, oligarchic rule, and the systematic treatment of dissent as disloyalty.

Apparently sovereignty is sacred until exercised by an Indian citizen with the wrong religion or opinion.

This is not merely hypocrisy. It is strategic stupidity. India cannot credibly pose as a leader of the Global South while reproducing at home the political grammar historically associated with colonial power: state terror, graded citizenship, civilizational hierarchy, collective suspicion and the conversion of minorities into permanent security problems.

Nor can India support Palestine abroad while allowing rabid anti-Muslim racism to become electoral currency at home. A communiqué does not make a state anti-colonial. Resisting supremacy does — including the supremacy manufactured inside one’s own borders.

This is where Israel should frighten India more than inspire it.

Israel demonstrates the corrosive end-state of permanent siege politics: every disagreement becomes existential, every opponent becomes a terrorist, every use of force justifies the next, and militarized – and genocidal – nationalism slowly eats the society it claims to defend. India has admired Israeli “toughness” for years without examining the bill.

The 2025 clash with Pakistan should already have exposed the emptiness of television muscularity. Nationalism looks invincible on a studio set. It becomes less impressive when aircraft, air defence and escalation ladders begin asking factual questions. Swagger is excellent content. It is not a strategy.

Bishkek therefore offers India something larger than diplomatic symbolism: a route back toward an independent foreign policy proportionate to its weight. Not anti-American hysteria, not Chinese subordination, not sentimental Russophilia, not Israeli deference — but actual autonomy.

There is only one problem. India cannot recover the dignity of its international tradition while violently annihilating the pluralism that gave that tradition meaning.

Bandung abroad and fascism at home cannot coexist indefinitely.

At Bishkek, India did not become enlightened. It merely behaved, internationally, like India again. For a nation of 1.4 billion people, that should be a very low bar. The real test is whether the spine it rediscovered abroad extends all the way home.

From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza: The cost of impunity

by Dr Mustafa Fetouri

Smoke rises following an Israeli army strike on a building at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on September 08, 2026. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]

Imagine this scene: “One young woman, fearing she would not survive, stepped out of the crowd and handed her infant to one of the female doctors.” Those are the words of American Jewish nurse Ellen Siegel, recalling that moment from Shatila—one of Lebanon’s 12 official Palestinian refugee camps, established in 1949—and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood, which was predominantly Palestinian but was not itself an UNRWA refugee camp. Siegel had volunteered to go to Lebanon as a nurse to help Palestinians and Lebanese civilians caught up in Israel’s 1982 invasion, and was working at Gaza Hospital in the Sabra area when the massacre began.

On September 18, as she and other foreign medical workers were being forced out of the hospital by Phalangist militiamen, Siegel watched her colleague, volunteer doctor Swee Ang, carry the baby a short distance before a militiaman stopped her, took the infant, and handed it back to its mother.

Around them, Siegel recalled, women and children were huddled under the guard of armed men while dead bodies lay along the streets.

Next week, September 17, marks the second day of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which began on September 16, 1982, and ended on September 18—44 years ago. Lasting approximately 43 hours, the slaughter was carried out by Lebanese Phalangist militiamen while Israeli forces surrounded and controlled the area. The exact number of civilians killed remains disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to over three thousand; Palestinian sources have put the death toll at more than 3,500.

The scene carried a particular horror for Siegel, a Jewish American who had grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust. She recalled thinking of Jewish mothers in Germany and Poland handing their infants to strangers in desperate attempts to save them from extermination. She had been taught, she wrote, that whenever she witnessed an injustice, she was obligated to speak out.

She did speak. In October 1982, Siegel submitted a 12-page statement detailing what she had witnessed, and on November 1, she testified before Israel’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry. The commission’s 1983 report found Defense Minister Ariel Sharon personally responsible for failing to prevent the massacre and recommended his removal from office. Yet, as is consistently the case when Israel investigates its own military—a doctrine of impunity dating back to the state’s founding on stolen Palestinian land—no criminal charges or prosecutions followed. Though Sharon stepped down as defense minister at the time he remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio, stayed at the heart of Israeli power, and eventually became prime minister—later laying siege to Ramallah and widely implicated in the murder of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

The terror Siegel witnessed was not an isolated aberration, but an early indication of a pattern in which Palestinian civilian suffering could generate outrage and documentation without producing meaningful accountability. Her testimony captured the human cost of that impunity in intimate detail: a mother desperately handing her infant to a stranger in the hope of saving its life. The tragedy of her account lies not only in the horror of September 1982, but in what followed—the gap between what the world knew and what it was willing to do. Over the next four decades, that gap would become a defining feature of the international response to Palestinian civilian deaths.

The sheer volume of civilian blood spilled frames the core question of international apathy.

In September 1982, inside the narrow confines of Sabra and Shatila, thousaqnds of  defenseless Palestinians were slaughtered over three days—a body count compiled so hurriedly that mass graves were dug before many victims could even be identified.

Fast-forward to Gaza today, where the organized genocide has claimed the lives of over 74,000, a vast proportion of who are women and children. Yet, both then and now, Western political establishments and legal bodies hesitated or flatly refused to apply the term “genocide” and uphold the obligations that come with it. In 1982, the slaughter was framed strictly as a localized “massacre” or “atrocity,” avoiding the legal weight of the 1948 Genocide Convention to dodge the mandatory international duty to intervene. Today, despite explicit warnings from UN experts and preliminary findings by international courts, world leaders perform the same rhetorical gymnastics. While symbolic gestures like recognizing a Palestinian state are offered, they yield far too little in terms of immediate accountability; Western powers remain unwilling to force Israel to end its occupation or ensure its military commanders and soldiers are held to account, even under domestic legal frameworks that consistently deny justice to Palestinian victims. The International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued in November 2024 against top Israeli leadership should have been acted upon immediately—yet instead of enforcing them, major political powers have targeted the court itself for dismantling.

When Siegel traveled to Jerusalem to testify, she was driven by a conviction rooted in the historical memory of her own people: “Six million Jews perished because no one spoke out,” she later wrote.

She trusted that putting a face and voice to the horror would force a moment of genuine judicial accountability. Instead, the commission’s primary function proved to be institutional damage control. While it conceded that Israel held “indirect responsibility” and prompted Ariel Sharon’s administrative resignation, it actively minimized the testimony of international medical workers, casting doubt on their impartiality while shielding Israeli military and political leadership from criminal prosecution. Rather than delivering justice, the inquiry pioneered a template of state-managed self-investigation—producing a performative display of moral introspection that satisfied Western allies while ensuring those who facilitated the slaughter suffered no real legal penalty.

Four decades later in Gaza, a new generation of international medical workers is delivering identical, horrifying eyewitness accounts—while being directly targeted by the Israeli army in a campaign that has killed over 1,580 healthcare personnel, injured hundreds more, and forced the closure of most medical facilities.

But whereas in 1982 Israel felt compelled to construct an internal commission, today it does not even bother to listen. When these medics speak out in international media, Israel, in a characteristically hypocritical stance, simply responds by smearing them with accusations of antisemitism. 

Forty-four years after Sabra and Shatila, international legal structures have advanced greatly—most notably with the creation of the International Criminal Court—yet the reality for Palestinian civilians have hardly changed for the better. From the ongoing genocide in Gaza to relentless, state-backed settler attacks across the occupied West Bank, Israeli impunity remains entirely uncontained. Had the international community acted with genuine resolve 44 years ago and held Israel strictly accountable, it might have shattered the doctrine of impunity before it could enable today’s catastrophes. The failure to deliver justice in 1982 did not merely leave past crimes unpunished—it paved the direct path to present-day destruction.

Iran’s industrial parks to become smart, specialized ecosystems under new SME strategy

TEHRAN- Iran’s industrial parks must become smart, specialized, and sustainable ecosystems, said Tahmoures Lahouti Ashkouri, deputy minister of industry and head of the Iran Small Industries and Industrial Parks Organization.

At Iran Chamber of Commerce, he praised SMEs for carrying much of production and employment despite economic hardship.

ISIPO follows six strategic axes aligned with the ministry’s ten strategies. Priorities include upgrading value chains, building lasting links between small and large firms, and regional development based on local advantages. Mining industries are a key focus; Khaf in Khorasan Razavi is targeted for a specialized industrial park.

On digital transformation, he said industrial parks can no longer be just land and sheds. They must offer shared digital services, integrated energy management, and data-driven governance. One park will pilot the plan, with one park in each of 31 provinces next year.

ISIPO launched Iran’s subcontracting exchange system with the Chamber. It connects SMEs to large industries in energy equipment, connectors, electric motors, power plant equipment, and water treatment. The aim is stable, transparent ties, stronger supply chains, and less import dependence. Chamber Vice President Bagheri said the system must produce real contracts, not data, and integrate SMEs into national and global value chains.

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• Iran’s Small Industries and Industrial Parks Organization (ISIPO)
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
• Iran Industry Ministry

How can BRICS help Iran’s trade get past sanctions, dollar?

TEHRAN- For Iran, BRICS is not merely an economic pact; it is a large market and a set of financial, commercial, and transit routes that, if their capacities are activated, can open a new chapter in the country’s foreign trade.

According to Mehr News Agency, Iran attends the BRICS summit in India at a time when the group has become one of the most important centers of Global South trade. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, BRICS members’ merchandise exports reached about $6 trillion in 2024 and their imports about $5 trillion, while intra-group trade rose to about $1.2 trillion.

These figures show that for Iran, BRICS is not merely a political coalition; rather, it encompasses a set of major consumer, producer, energy-exporting economies and capital-market owners. Iran also became a full member of the group in 2024, alongside China, India, Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa.

* Iran’s trade with BRICS; a number more important than membership itself

The reality is that even before its official membership, Iran conducted a significant portion of its foreign trade with BRICS member states. Data published in the BRICS economic bulletin show that Iran’s customs exports to BRICS countries reached about $23.7 billion in the Iranian year 1403 (ended in March 2025) while Iran’s imports from these countries in the same period were about $38.8 billion.

Thus, Iran’s trade with BRICS, before being a potential opportunity, is already an important part of the country’s foreign trade reality. The main question begins here: to what extent can Iran’s membership in this group change the quality of this trade?

The challenge of Iran’s trade with BRICS member states is not merely finding a buyer or seller; in many cases, the main problem goes back to money transfers, transaction costs, insurance, transportation, banking restrictions, and sanctions risk.

From this perspective, the importance of BRICS’s financial track for Iran is no less than increasing trade volume itself.

One of the most important economic topics at this year’s BRICS summit was developing payment mechanisms and reducing friction in exchanges among members. India, as BRICS chair in 2026, is now pursuing a proposal to connect the central bank digital currencies of the group’s members to facilitate cross-border payments. This plan continues BRICS efforts to increase interoperability of members’ payment systems.

For Iran, the importance of this issue is clear. Any mechanism that can reduce the cost and time of foreign trade settlement can directly affect the possibility of expanding exports and imports.

Of course, this path still faces serious obstacles. Reuters has reported that geopolitical disagreements among members and even the severing of financial relations between Iran and the UAE, along with the need for currency swap mechanisms to manage trade imbalances, have made implementing such plans difficult.

Therefore, expectations from BRICS should not be the creation of a “common currency” or the overnight elimination of the dollar; rather, in the short term, reducing settlement costs, greater use of local currencies, and connecting payment systems can be a more practical achievement for members’ trade.

Expectations from BRICS should not be the creation of a “common currency” or the overnight elimination of the dollar; rather, in the short term, reducing settlement costs, greater use of local currencies, and connecting payment systems can be a more practical achievement for members’ trade.

Among BRICS members, China remains Iran’s most important trading partner. World Trade Organization data show that in 2024, China accounted for 26 percent of Iran’s imports and 26 percent of Iran’s exports.

But this high concentration has another side; if BRICS is to become a tool for diversifying Iran’s foreign trade, merely increasing exchanges with China is not enough.

India, Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other members of the group each have different markets and capacities, and expanding trade with them can reduce the excessive concentration of Iran’s trade on a few limited partners.

Of course, India’s situation is different from China’s. Trade between Iran and India in recent years has been limited under the influence of sanctions and secondary pressure from the United States, and bilateral trade, compared with the capacity of the two economies, is far below the expected level. Reuters, in an August report, also reported a decline in India-Iran trade under US pressure and described India’s trade with Iran as mainly limited to certain food and pharmaceutical items.

From this perspective, Iran’s presence at the India summit was an opportunity to redefine this very trade relationship—not only at the Tehran–Delhi level, but within the broader BRICS framework.

* Iran can turn from a “Market” into a “Trade Route”

Iran’s capacity within BRICS is not limited to goods exports. The country’s geographical position, especially in connecting Russia and northern Eurasia to southern waters and the Indian market, is another important advantage.

Before the trip to India, too, the economy minister had described strengthening the North–South Corridor, along with developing financial and trade cooperation with Russia, as among the axes of the government’s economic diplomacy.

The Mehr reporter’s conversation with economic actors confirmed this point: this issue is particularly important from a trade perspective, because if Iran can simultaneously be a producer, exporter, and transit route, the economic value of BRICS membership for the country will multiply.

If Iran can simultaneously be a producer, exporter, and transit route, the economic value of BRICS membership for the country will multiply.

According to economic actors, in such a model, goods are not only exported from Iran to a BRICS member state; rather, part of the trade among BRICS members can also pass through Iran.

The North–South Corridor gains particular importance here, because India, as one of BRICS’s major economies, needs diverse routes to access the Russian and Eurasian markets, and Iran enjoys a privileged geographical position in this regard.

Despite all these capacities, one reality should not be overlooked: BRICS membership does not by itself create trade.

The experience of other members also shows that even trade among BRICS countries, despite notable growth, faces structural obstacles; for example, India’s trade with BRICS has grown in recent years, but India’s trade deficit with the group reached about $226 billion in fiscal year 2026—a matter showing that increased trade does not necessarily mean balanced trade or equal benefits for members.

Economic actors believe that for Iran, too, the issue is not only increasing the trade figure; rather, it must be seen what effect this trade will have on non-oil exports, imports of raw materials and machinery, investment, technology transfer, and foreign exchange income.

In this framework, if BRICS merely leads to an increase in Iran’s imports from member states, it cannot be considered a trade success. The main goal should be creating greater balance, increasing exports with higher added value, and attracting capital for export-oriented production.

If BRICS merely leads to an increase in Iran’s imports from member states, it cannot be considered a trade success. The main goal should be creating greater balance, increasing exports with higher added value, and attracting capital for export-oriented production.

Iran’s presence at this year’s BRICS summit came as the global economic atmosphere is more than ever affected by sanctions, trade war, financial restrictions, and disruption of transportation routes.

At the same time, the Iran–US war and developments in the Strait of Hormuz have confronted BRICS itself with an unprecedented test. Reuters has reported that the current crisis has even affected trade relations between two BRICS members, Iran and the UAE, and that the UAE has halted trade with Iran since August.

This development makes one important point clear to Iran: BRICS is not yet a free trade area or an integrated economic union. Its members have different and sometimes conflicting interests, and it cannot be expected that mere membership in this group will remove Iran’s trade restrictions.

But this very reality makes the importance of Iran’s economic negotiations within this framework greater.

If Iran can use BRICS’s capacity to create payment routes, use local currencies, finance projects, develop transit corridors, and expand trade agreements, membership in this group can turn from a diplomatic achievement into a real tool of foreign trade.

Otherwise, despite BRICS’s multi-trillion-dollar market, an important part of the capacity of this membership will remain on paper.

Therefore, merely being large cannot by itself help improve Iran’s trade process; rather, it must be seen what share of this bloc’s trade Iran can obtain and, more importantly, through what mechanism it can move the money generated by this trade, and even more importantly, that BRICS moves from the level of political statements to the level of contracts, payments, investment, and the real flow of goods.

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• BRICS
• Iran BRICS membership
• BRICS Summit