Iran's FM Urges BRICS to Unite Against US 'Bullying' at New Delhi Summit

In New Delhi this week, Iran's Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi stood before the assembled BRICS nations and made a direct appeal: stop tolerating American pressure alone. The time had come, he argued, for the coalition to act as one.

Araghchi's message was pointed. He acknowledged that nearly every country in the room had felt the weight of what he called American coercion—each nation experiencing its own variation of the same underlying force. The specifics differed from country to country, but the pattern was identical. What he was proposing was not new grievance-airing but coordinated resistance. "It is high time for us to jointly step up and work towards making clear that those practices belong in the dustbin of history," he said, his language suggesting that such tactics were not merely unjust but obsolete.

The Iranian minister framed the moment in historical terms. He suggested that the United States, as a declining power, was growing more desperate and more dangerous precisely because of its waning influence. "History has shown that empires in decline will stop at nothing to arrest their inevitable fates," he said. "A wounded animal will desperately claw and roar on its way down." The metaphor was stark: a great power in retreat, lashing out indiscriminately.

Araghchi's remarks came during the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting, a two-day gathering in New Delhi that brought together some of the world's most significant non-Western powers. The timing and venue mattered. India, as chair of the forum, was signaling its own diplomatic priorities by hosting the event. On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met directly with Araghchi on the sidelines of the meeting—a high-level interaction that underscored India's engagement with Iran on questions of regional stability and multilateral cooperation.

The gathering itself reflected BRICS' evolving role in global affairs. The coalition—originally an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has positioned itself as a counterweight to Western-dominated institutions. But the forum's significance has grown more acute in recent months, particularly as tensions in West Asia have intensified. New Delhi's decision to host this ministerial meeting and to facilitate direct engagement between India's prime minister and Iran's foreign minister suggested that BRICS was being tested as a platform for managing some of the world's most volatile regional conflicts.

Araghchi's call for unified resistance was not merely rhetorical posturing. It reflected a genuine frustration among non-aligned nations that have faced economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and other forms of pressure from Washington. By framing this as a shared experience across the BRICS membership, he was attempting to transform individual grievances into collective leverage. The question now was whether the coalition would respond to his appeal with the kind of coordinated action he was requesting, or whether member states would continue to navigate their relationships with the United States on largely bilateral terms.