BRICS faces its Iran test

The military and political confrontation between the United States and Iran is becoming less a crisis than a permanent feature of the international landscape. A new center of chronic instability is emerging in south-western Eurasia, and it will shape political and economic developments across the wider region for years to come.This matters not only because of Iran’s geopolitical position, but because it’s now a permanent member of both BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Unlike Russia’s confrontation with the West, which is mediated through the conflict in Ukraine, Iran’s dispute with Washington is direct and that reality inevitably raises questions about how BRICS and the SCO will function as organizations and what role they can play in an increasingly fragmented international order.Both groups emerged from the crisis of the liberal world order that became apparent in the early 2000s when the American-led ‘war on terror’ and the invasion of Iraq convinced many governments that the promised unipolar world had failed to deliver stability or impartial global leadership.The SCO, founded in 2001, was designed to strengthen regional cooperation in Eurasia while BRICS,...