Brics has oil and Iran. Does that give it an upper hand over the US-led West?

World leaders have gathered at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Saturday for the 2026 Brics Summit.

The heads of state meeting comes as the conflict between Iran and the US refuses to die down as the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted with fresh threats emerging over the Red Sea as well.

With Brent crude hovering above $100 a barrel, the expanded 11-member Brics bloc stands in the eye of the storm of the energy crisis.

With the inclusion of major energy titans — Russia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt — alongside economic powerhouses like China, India, and Brazil, the expanded grouping now commands between 41 to 47 per cent of world crude oil production and over 70 per cent of proven global oil reserves.

How Brics became an oil titan

The original BRIC formation — Brazil, Russia, India, and China, later joined by South Africa — was conceived primarily as an investment concept representing fast-growing emerging markets.

Energy was a factor, particularly given Russia’s status as a major oil and gas exporter, but the group lacked the concentration necessary to dictate global energy prices.

The expansion wave fundamentally rewritten this equation. By bringing the Persian Gulf’s heavyweights — Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates — into the same fold as Russia, Brics united the world’s premier oil exporters with the world’s most voracious oil importers under a single banner.

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On paper, the energy synergy is staggering. China and India together account for the bulk of global crude oil demand growth. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the UAE represent the core of global export capacity.

In theory, this creates a closed-loop energy ecosystem where producers sell directly to consumers without requiring Western intermediaries, Western shipping insurance, or Western currency clearing systems.

The concentration of supply gives the bloc an overwhelming presence within OPEC+, the wider producer alliance that regulates global crude output.

For a Western world battling persistent inflation, high interest rates, and fragile supply chains, a consolidated Brics energy bloc presents a formidable structural challenge.

What Iran brings to the table in its time of turmoil

Despite decades of Western sanctions, Washington’s maximum pressure campaigns, and recent military strikes, Iran remains an indispensable component of the Brics energy matrix.

Iran offers key tactical and strategic advantages to the Brics grouping. Having operated under heavy Western sanctions for decades, Iran has pioneered sophisticated illicit and semi-official logistics networks.

From “ghost fleets” of dark-market tankers to shadow banking mechanisms in Dubai and Guangzhou, Tehran has perfected the art of moving millions of barrels of crude outside the reach of the US Treasury Department.

Russia adopted and expanded these very networks following Western sanctions over the Ukraine war, effectively creating a shared, sanctions-resistant energy trade infrastructure across Eurasia.

One of the recently obvious advantages to have come to light is the fact that Iran sits directly adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s petroleum liquids pass daily.

As the US-Iran war escalates, shipping disruptions in Hormuz and strikes near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait as well have driven global shipping insurance rates to historical highs and pushed Brent crude above $100.

Tehran’s capacity to raise the cost of energy transport gives it asymmetric leverage against Western economies that rely on steady, cheap energy flows.

Beyond raw crude, Iran possesses extensive gas reserves and a growing downstream petrochemical sector.

For energy-hungry giants like China, Iranian energy is not just crude oil, it is cheap feedstocks provided under long-term, local-currency supply agreements that insulate Beijing’s manufacturing sector from Western price spikes.

Speaking at the Brics Business Forum in New Delhi on Friday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian opined that Brics was explicitly designed to counter unilateralism and resist economic bullying by Western powers.

For Moscow and Beijing, holding Iran inside the Brics framework ensures that Western efforts to isolate Tehran fail structurally, rendering Western financial penalties increasingly obsolete in non-Western trade zones.

How Saudi remains cautious

While Iran actively uses Brics as an anti-Western shield, Saudi Arabia’s posture toward the bloc remains vastly more cautious, representing one of the major internal fault lines of the expanded organisation.

While invited to join as a full member alongside Iran and the UAE, Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has maintained a carefully calibrated hedging strategy rather than an outright ideological commitment to Brics.

Riyadh’s hesitancy stems from its structural realities that prevent it from fully turning its back on the West. Despite periodic strains in bilateral relations, Saudi Arabia relies fundamentally on the United States for defence and regional intelligence infrastructure.

The ongoing volatility in West Asia, pointed out by recent drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s cross-country East-West pipeline, puts Riyadh in a perpetual state of vulnerability.

Moscow and Beijing cannot — and will not — provide the security guarantees or military hardware that Washington offers to the Gulf monarchies.

As far as the money trail goes, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and the kingdom’s sovereign wealth assets are also heavily invested in US Treasury securities, American technology firms, European real estate, and Western equity markets.

Although China brokered a historic reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, deep-seated rivalries persist. Saudi Arabia views Iran’s network of regional proxies with intense suspicion.

For Riyadh, sitting at the same table as Tehran inside Brics is a mechanism for conflict management and risk diversification, not an endorsement of a joint anti-Western alliance.

And for Saudi Arabia, the primary vehicle for global energy policy remains OPEC+, where it collaborates closely with Russia to manage oil production levels solely through the lens of price stability and revenue maximisation.

How China and India navigate the Brics energy matrix

The true consumers driving Brics energy power are China and India. Together, these two Asian giants represent nearly 3 billion people and the primary engines of global oil demand growth.

Their energy strategies, however, highlight both the strength and the limitations of the Brics grouping.

China has pursued energy security through massive infrastructure diversification. Beijing has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in overland oil and gas pipelines from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Myanmar, alongside long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with Qatar.

By securing overland energy supply lines, China drastically reduces its exposure to US naval blockades at maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca.

China’s dominance in renewable energy supply chains like solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium battery manufacturing also allows it to use Brics energy trade as a transitional bridge while accelerating its domestic green transition.

India, hosting the 2026 summit, presents a completely different dynamic. New Delhi imports over 85 per cent of its crude oil requirements, making it acutely vulnerable to global price shocks caused by instability.

India’s energy policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strictly pragmatic and non-aligned.

Following Western sanctions on Moscow, India became the largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, saving billions of dollars for its national treasury while refining and exporting petroleum products back to European and American markets.

At the same time, India maintains deep defence, economic, and strategic partnerships with the United States, Israel, and the Gulf monarchies.

Why Brics is not a monolithic energy cartel

Despite its formidable energy statistics, Brics lacks the structural coherence required to operate as a unified energy bloc capable of imposing its will on the West.

The group suffers from fundamental internal contradictions that prevent it from establishing a common energy policy.

The economic objectives of Brics members are inherently opposed. Energy exporters like Russia and Iran benefit from elevated global crude prices, which maximise state revenues and fund national budgets.

Conversely, energy importers like India and South Africa suffer severely when crude prices cross $100 per barrel, as high energy costs trigger inflation, widen trade deficits, and depress domestic consumer spending.

An energy strategy that pleases Moscow or Tehran inevitably hurts New Delhi and Pretoria.

Meanwhile, the escalating US-Iran conflict has placed severe strain on relationships between Tehran and the Gulf monarchies inside Brics.

Negotiators at the New Delhi summit faced had initially faced difficulty drafting a unified declaration due to conflicting stances.

Similarly, persistent border tensions between China and India mean that New Delhi remains wary of any Brics initiative that expands Beijing’s economic hegemony.

While China leads the world in green technology exports and India aggressively expands solar and nuclear capacity, states like Russia and Saudi Arabia remain economically reliant on fossil fuel extraction.

Formulating a cohesive policy on carbon pricing, climate goals, or renewable energy integration across such diverse economies is nearly impossible.

As former diplomats and analysts at the summit have noted, Brics is not a formal international organisation like the European Union or Nato, nor is it a specialised cartel like OPEC.

It is a loose diplomatic forum that enables non-Western nations to coordinate economic strategies where interests overlap, while quietly managing their sharp differences elsewhere.

So does Brics hold the upper hand over the West?

In terms of physical resources, commodity reserves, and control over critical shipping bottlenecks, Brics undoubtedly holds an unprecedented position of strength.

The West can no longer dictate oil prices through pressure on a single partner, nor can it cut off major adversaries like Russia or Iran from global markets without inflicting catastrophic economic pain on its own consumers.

A game-changer in favour of Brics could have been the crude capacity of Venezuela which is at roughly 303 billion barrels of crude oil, making up nearly 17 to 20 per cent of global reserves. But recent shifts have indicated a pivot towards Washington as far as Caracas is concerned.

The emergence of non-dollar trade rails and local currency clearing mechanisms guarantees that Western sanctions will never again carry the absolute enforcement power they possessed at the start of the 21st century.

However, leverage over crude oil does not automatically translate into total strategic victory.

The Western alliance retains several structural advantages that Brics cannot easily overcome. Unlike the 1970s OPEC shock, the United States is now the world’s single largest producer of oil and natural gas, driven by shale technology and deepwater extraction.

While European allies remain vulnerable to energy spikes, the US domestic market possesses an energy cushion that insulates its industrial base far better than in previous decades.

Meanwhile, the US dollar remains the undisputed global reserve currency.

With inputs from agencies