An article on July 5 in the New York Times, headlined “An Isolated Iran Looks to BRICS for Allies, Testing a New World Order,” is hardly subtle in the message that it was written to deliver to the BRICS nations now meeting in Rio de Janeiro: “Military strikes on Iran are testing its unity.”
The BRICS is an “alliance of emerging economies [that] hopes to offer a counterweight to the United States and other Western powers,” the Times states, and the BRICS summit “will be a chance for Iran, a newcomer to the group, to show it has powerful allies, even as it faces sanctions and threats of more military strikes over its nuclear program.” In fact, “analysts expect Iran to use the upcoming summit as an opportunity to shore up more forceful support from the group, particularly in a communiqué expected to be issued at the end of the meeting.”
The West, however, has a different gameplan. “With the conflict involving Iran as a backdrop, analysts say the group will have a hard time forging a united front,” since other nations don’t want to receive the Iran treatment and are being told to pull in their horns, or else.
