The BRICS Group Announces New Members, Expanding Its Reach

The five-nation BRICS club of emerging economies that came together to tilt the international order away from the West announced plans Thursday to expand its membership, feeding concerns about a growing global divide.

The BRICS group, which encompasses Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, represents a quarter of the world’s economy and has increasingly sought to act as a counterweight to the dominance of Western-led forums like the Group of 7 and the World Bank.

At its summit in Johannesburg, the group announced that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had been invited to join, and that their memberships would begin in January.

The BRICS group has said that it wants to bring diversity to the world’s power structure amid increasing polarization. That polarization has been deepened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strained relations between the United States and China on economic and security issues. Smaller countries caught between the world’s wealthier nations have faced pressure to pick sides or, in some cases, occupy a middle ground in an effort to get the best deal from the competing nations.

The surprise inclusion of Tehran — which has antagonistic relations with China’s chief rival, the United States — suggests that Chinese and Russian pressure succeeded over the qualms of members like India, Brazil and South Africa, which maintain friendly ties with the West.

“Iran, obviously, is a complicated choice,” said Cobus van Staden, a researcher with the China Global South Project. “I can imagine that some of the other members worry that it might increase geopolitical tensions with Western powers, which I think it kind of inevitably would.”

The expansion, more broadly, gives the group more financial heft and bolsters the bid by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to show that Beijing has growing diplomatic support for its agenda despite having alienated many countries in the developing world over his support for Russia.

Those optics may turn out to be the most significant takeaway from the summit, which otherwise failed to deliver on some of the group’s long-stated goals, like establishing a BRICS currency to rival the dominant U.S. dollar.

Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s representative in the BRICS negotiations, told reporters that the group needs to change with the times. “This is what BRICS is saying, let’s be more inclusive. BRICS is not anti-West,” he said.

But the inclusion of Iran complicates that picture.

Iran applied to join BRICS in June as part of its efforts to strengthen economic and political ties with non-Western powers and to demonstrate that the West’s efforts to isolate it had failed. The country, which holds the world’s second-largest gas reserves, has stayed afloat by selling discounted oil to China, among other maneuvers.

Iran and Russia have formed a deepening strategic partnership amid the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. The United States has described Iran as Russia’s top international military backer and has warned about the impact deepening military trade between the two countries could have on Ukraine.

In making the announcement on Thursday, Mohammad Jamshidi, Iran’s vice president for politics, called it a “historic achievement and a strategic victory” for the Islamic Republic to join BRICS and congratulated Iran’s leadership and people.

Leading up to the summit, American officials sought to play down the impact of the group’s expansion plans. On Tuesday, Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters that the Biden administration was “not looking at the BRICS as evolving into some kind of geopolitical rival to the United States or anyone else.”

He said that the United States had “strong positive” relations with Brazil, India and South Africa, adding that “we will continue to manage our relationship with China; and we will continue to push back on Russia’s aggression.”

Despite a public show of unity at the tightly controlled conference, the BRICS members brought divergent views on expansion. Several leaders warned against a return to a divisive global order reminiscent of the Cold War. India, which has been locked in a territorial dispute with China, has sought to avoid diluting its own role in the group in favor of countries closer to China. Brazil and South Africa have wanted to avoid alienating partners in Europe and North America.

Mr. Xi, who had pushed for a rapid expansion of the group, said the move to bring in new members was “historic.” In a speech read by a subordinate at the summit earlier this week, he said, “International rules must be written and upheld jointly by all countries, rather than dictated by those with the strongest muscles.”

Some of the countries that were invited to join have considerable practice walking a fine diplomatic line with the West. Saudi Arabia, the BRICS club’s biggest trading partner in the Middle East, has cultivated ties with China and has demonstrated independence from American interests despite its longstanding security relationship with the United States.

Egypt, politically and geographically straddling Africa and the Middle East, has built strong relationships with Russia and China, while maintaining its ties to the United States.

For Argentina, facing yet another economic crisis and diminishing foreign reserves, membership in the BRICS could be a financial lifeline. During the summit, Mr. Lula of neighboring Brazil has championed the creation of an alternative trading unit that would ease emerging nations’ dependence on the strong U.S. dollar. Argentina has already begun repaying some of its loans in the Chinese currency, analysts said, though it is unclear how much relief it will gain.

The United Arab Emirates, which was also invited as a formal member, already joined the BRICS’ New Development Bank in June.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington and Isabella Kwai from London.