Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian declared in Tehran on Thursday that the BRICS summit he had just returned from would herald the end of American dominance on the world stage, telling reporters the decisions made there would “gradually thwart the conspiracy of the U.S. and its allies.”
Pezeshkian’s comments stand starkly at odds with the message out of other BRICS nations, whose leaders have insisted that the coalition is meant to elevate the voices of the “Global South,” but not at the expense of the interests of the United States or the greater West.
BRICS – an acronym for its five core members, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is an economic and geopolitical association actively working to dismantle the post-World War II political order. The group held its summit from Tuesday to Thursday in Kazan, Russia, where strongman Vladimir Putin used the occasion to project an image to the world of a beloved and well-integrated world leader in the face of hefty Western sanctions, an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, and global disgust over his ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine. In addition to its core members, BRICS inducted four new members in January: Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Ethiopia. A fifth invited member, Saudi Arabia, has refused to accept or reject the invitation.
Before the summit began, leaders suggested that the top issues of discussion at the summit would be the potential to induct new members – another 33 states sent representation to the summit in addition to BRICS members – the creation of a sanctions-proof international payment system, and condemning Israel for its self-defense operations against Iran-backed terrorists. The ultimate BRICS Kazan Declaration addressed sanctions by repeatedly condemning their use generally, including in cases where they were used to promote action against the “climate crisis,” and condemned Israel, but the parties ultimately did not agree on the construction of any parallel payment structure.
Despite the clear anti-Western objectives of the bloc, several of its members maintain friendly relations with America and actively reject the categorization of the group as being in active opposition to the interests of Western countries. Iranian President Pezeshkian undermined that message on Thursday, returning to a message he repeated multiple times this week that BRICS will topple the current world order.
“BRICS seeks to counter US unilateralism tied to the dollar, as it imposes sanctions at will, exacerbating global economic challenges,” Pezeshkian said on Thursday upon returning from the summit, according to the Iranian propaganda site PressTV.
The Iranian president, who is subordinate to “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted that BRICS would “gradually thwart the conspiracy of the US and its allies.”
“I believe that if we can implement the goals of this organization and the discussions and agreements made at this meeting, the conspiracy by the United States and its allies will gradually be neutralized,” he affirmed.
Pezeshkian made similar remarks throughout the conference. In a meeting on Thursday with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, whose country is reportedly one of 13 accepted as BRICS “partner” nations, Pezeshkian stated that “the era of compliance with the US policies has ended as independent countries have overcome American totalitarianism through interaction.”
“We are seeking to create a world filled with fairness and justice, and without double standards on key issues like human rights”, Pezeshkian said in the meeting with the leftist dictator.
Speaking to the Russian news agency Tass, Pezeshkian said again that BRICS “can put an end to the dominance of the collective West, which has proved incapable of being responsible for the civilized development of international relations.”
In his speech to the summit, Pezeshkian emphasized the need to condemn the United States and eliminate its influence through human rights and other sanctions.
“Pezeshkian stated that independent countries can no longer pay the price for the wrong financial policies of the US or its ineffectiveness to fight organized corruption,” the Iranian Tasnim News Agency paraphrased, “emphasizing that efforts made so far to reduce the dominance of the dollar on global economy should be enhanced through practical solutions.”
Pezeshkian fulfilled his promised shortly before landing in Kazan that he would emphasize his anti-American stance at the summit.
“The heads of state who will attend this summit will present their vision of BRICS. This event can eclipse the US unipolar world. BRICS is a way out of US totalitarianism,” Pezeshkian said early this week. “There will be a meeting of [the leaders of] BRICS member countries that seek to build a multipolar world.”
The Iranian president’s comments contradict the message out of other, more influential BRICS members, most notably India and Russia. In an interview with the Russian news agency Tass on Friday, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov, described as a “BRICS sherpa,” insisted that BRICS does not intend to actively damage the interests of the West.
“BRICS is not an anti-Western association. We say so outright,” Ryabkov said. “We call things by their proper names. We are open to cooperation. Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly stated this yesterday.”
“But we will not allow anyone to disregard our interests and to try to lecture us, the participants in the BRICS association, which has already grown two-fold,” he continued, “on how we should live and what we should do, including in the sphere of cooperation in economics, finance and trade.”
Ryabkov was critical of the West sanctioning Russia, Iran, and others in BRICS for their rampant human rights abuses, but insisted the objective of BRICS is not explicitly “anti-Western.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, potentially responding to the rhetoric out of Tehran, told reporters on Wednesday that he was concerned about the anti-American reputation BRICS had developed.
“We must be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions,” Modi said. “We have to give the world the message that BRICS is not a divisive organization but one that works in the interest of humanity.”
Chinese state media has for months similarly published stories insisting that any depicting of BRICS as anti-Western is a “misconception,” one that state parties hoped to debunk – with, apparently, no help from Iran.
No Western nations are members or have been invited to join BRICS. One Western nation, France, attempted to partake in the 2023 BRICS summit, but French President Emmanuel Macron was met with suspicion and scorn, accused of mounting a “Trojan horse” operation to damage the organization.
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