Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE all set to join BRICS economic bloc alongside China, Russia

By AP 24 August 2023, 2:21 pm

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From left, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, China's President Xi Jinping, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pose for a BRICS group photo during the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug. 23, 2023. (Gianluigi Guercia/Pool via AP)

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are among six countries set to join Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the BRICS economic bloc next year, the bloc announces, a move that will likely throw more scrutiny on Beijing’s political influence in the Persian Gulf.

The United Arab Emirates, Argentina and Ethiopia are also set to become new members of BRICS from 2024.

BRICS was set up in 2009 as a group of emerging market economies and has become one of the leading voices for more representation of the developing world and the Global South in world affairs.

It currently represents around 40% of the world’s population and more than a quarter of the world’s GDP, although that is set to increase with the new members, which include three of the world’s biggest oil producers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.

Recently, questions have been raised over if BRICS is taking an anti-West turn under the influence of China and Russia amid Beijing’s deteriorating relationship with the United States and Russia’s standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine.

Mohammad Jamshidi, the political deputy of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, calls the decision to add his country “a historic move.”

“A strategic victory for Iran’s foreign policy,” Jamshidi writes on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. “Felicitations to the Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution and great nation of Iran.”