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March 6, 2026
As India BRICS chair in 2026, New Delhi had positioned Gulf relations as a cornerstone of its chairmanship strategy. Instead, the Iran war has torn that plan apart, and India is now scrambling to replace lost Middle East supply with Russian crude while staying silent on the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader and openly backing Israel and the US. Every other founding BRICS member has rallied behind Tehran. The bloc’s own chair is doing the opposite, and the Russian oil rush, the Israel alignment, and the Gulf supply crisis are all hitting at the same time.
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How India’s Israel Alignment and Russian Oil Rush Are Cracking BRICS From Within
Modi Visited Israel Hours Before the Strikes
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapped up a visit to Israel just hours before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran were launched, a trip that had been planned months in advance. After the strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with more than 550 others, Modi called Netanyahu to urge a ceasefire. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on the UAE. What he did not do is call Iran’s leadership, and New Delhi has still issued no statement on Khamenei’s death.
Every other founding BRICS member responded. Brazil condemned the attacks on February 28. Russia called them “a deliberate, premeditated, and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state.” China described the strikes as “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty” that “tramples on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter” and has reportedly sent weapons to Tehran. South Africa called for maximum restraint and noted that anticipatory self-defense is not permitted under international law.
India said nothing about any of it.
Gulf Relations in Freefall, Russian Oil Rush Begins
India gets about 40% of its oil imports from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz, and in the months leading up to the Iran war it had been actively shifting away from Russian crude and deepening Gulf supply relationships, partly to avoid US tariffs and partly to strengthen its broader India Gulf relations framework. That strategy collapsed overnight. With the Strait of Hormuz frozen since last weekend and Middle East supply effectively cut off, Indian state refiners have already bought around 20 million barrels of prompt Russian oil from traders, according to a source directly involved with the matter.
US Issues 30-Day Waiver as Oil Prices Spike
State refiners Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and Mangalore Refinery are all talking to traders for prompt Russian deliveries, and Reliance Industries has also approached traders for cargoes. The supply crunch is so severe that Russian Urals are now being sold to India at a premium of $4-$5 per barrel to Brent on a delivered basis, a dramatic reversal from the $13 per barrel discount that was available in February before the war started. As one trader put it, “India refiners are back in the market… nowadays more than prices, availability of molecules is the issue.”
The US Treasury issued a 30-day waiver on Thursday allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil currently stranded at sea. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it “a temporary stopgap” that would “not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government” since it only covers oil already at sea.
Vandana Hari, CEO of Vanda Insights, called the waiver “a relief valve” given the loss of nearly 20 million barrels per day of Gulf crude, but said it was “not nearly enough” and that Washington keeps putting “band aids on a gunshot wound.” She expects Brent to keep creeping higher through the $80s, with chances of the Hormuz blockade lifting quickly being “extremely dim.”
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The Chair Is the Crack in the Bloc
India currently has crude stocks covering only about 25 days of demand, making it acutely vulnerable to the Hormuz disruption. That energy vulnerability explains some of New Delhi’s positioning, but it does not account for the Israel alignment, the silence on Khamenei, or the fact that India approached the Trump administration directly to seek approval for Russian crude purchases rather than coordinating with BRICS partners.
None of BRICS’ collective decisions are binding on individual members, and that structural weakness is now impossible to ignore. Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, said no BRICS ruling class will come to Iran’s aid when their class interests are tied to Israel’s prosperity. The UAE, also a BRICS member, normalized ties with Israel years ago and is another fault line inside the bloc right now.
Who Chairs BRICS in 2027?
China will take over the BRICS chairmanship in 2027. The rotation follows the alphabetical order of the original founding five: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. BRICS does not expect newer members that joined in 2024 and 2025 to chair the bloc until after 2028.
What Beijing inherits is a bloc that failed to defend a member state from a military strike and watched its own chair side with the attackers. China has already condemned the Iran strikes and reportedly sent weapons to Tehran, so the contrast with India’s position could not be sharper. The 2027 chairmanship lands in Beijing’s lap at arguably the worst possible moment for BRICS unity.
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