Why BRICS Countries Are Quietly Celebrating the Iran War's Damage to the Western Alliance

While Western attention focuses on the Iran crisis, BRICS nations are watching a historic opportunity to reshape the global order. Here is what they see and what they are doing.

The meeting of BRICS finance ministers in mid-March 2026 was not primarily about the Iran war. The agenda covered trade settlement mechanisms, alternative reserve currency discussions, and development bank funding priorities that have been on the BRICS agenda for years. What gave the meeting an additional dimension was the context in which it occurred: a Western alliance visibly under strain, a US president pursuing unilateral military action that had embarrassed his closest allies, and European economies facing energy crises that the bloc's members were not only not sharing but, in some cases, actively benefiting from.

Russia, still the object of comprehensive Western sanctions, is selling oil to India, China, and other BRICS partners at prices that are elevated above their pre-war levels but still significantly discounted relative to global benchmarks — essentially subsidizing the energy needs of non-Western economies through the differential between what it can charge sanctioned and non-sanctioned buyers. The Iran war has increased the discount that Russian oil commands relative to benchmarks, making Russian oil even more attractive to price-sensitive buyers.

China is watching the Western alliance's Iran-related fractures with a mixture of strategic satisfaction and tactical caution. The fractures are satisfying because they accelerate the multipolar world order transition that China has been working toward for decades. The caution comes from Beijing's calculation that a crisis that destabilizes global energy markets and European economies also affects Chinese export demand and potentially Chinese investment returns in ways that make the 'good news' of Western alliance strain more complicated than it first appears.

India's position is the most interesting. A strategic partner of the United States by formal designation, a BRICS member by institutional affiliation, and a major buyer of both Russian and Gulf energy, India is navigating the Iran war with the particular diplomatic elasticity that its positioning between the Western and non-Western worlds allows. The Indian energy export tax that contributed to European diesel prices hitting records was not designed as a geopolitical statement — it was domestic consumer protection. But its effects have been geopolitical regardless of intent.