Iran Press/ Commentary: The 15th BRICS summit was held last week in the Sandton district of Johannesburg in South Africa. In a joint press conference with the leaders of Russia, China, Brazil, and India, the President of South Africa announced the agreement of the BRICS with Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia joining this group. 6 new members will officially join this group at the beginning of 2024. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and United Arab Emirates. After this event, various comments regarding the position of BRICS at the global level were raised.
One of the views is that with the joining of 6 new countries, each of which is of great economic and political importance, the BRICS can create a new polarization at the level of the global system. The main reason for such a view is that the old and new BRICS members have a large share of the world economy on the one hand and are against the unilateralist political order in the world system on the other hand. Salem Nasser, an international law expert at Brazil's FGV Direito SP University, says the requests to join BRICS show that there are constant changes in the global balance of power.
BRICS is a new pole of economic and political power that will compete with the hegemony of North America. Mehmet Ali Guller, a Turkish analyst, also believes that BRICS is one of the most important pillars of the new world order and has dealt a heavy blow to the US energy-political powerhouse.
Another issue is that BRICS members, both former and new members, can make important decisions in the economic field at the global level. This influence will be especially high in the field of energy because Saudi Arabia, Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the UAE are among the largest oil-producing countries in the world. The alignment or shared opinion of these countries in the field of energy can have many consequences for Western countries and affect the global economy as well. Also, the expansion of BRICS will increase the share of this group in global exports from 20.2% to 25.1%. Global banking group "Goldman Sachs" believes that by 2050 the economy of the BRICS countries will compete with the economies of the richest countries in the world.
Another important point is that BRICS can be a serious competitor for the Group of 7 (including the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom). With 6 new countries joining the BRICS group, Russian news agencies wrote in a statistical analysis that the total gross domestic product (GDP) of developed BRICS will be approximately 65 trillion dollars in terms of purchasing power parity. In this way, the share of this group in the global GDP will increase from the current 31.5% to 37%. Meanwhile, the share of the Group of Seven advanced economies is currently around 29.9%. Meanwhile, the 11 countries of the BRICS will have an area of 48.5 million square kilometers, which is 36% of the world's area, and this figure is more than double that of the Group of Seven. Their total population will reach 3.6 billion people, which is 45% of the entire world and more than four times higher than the group of seven.
By: Seyed Razi Emadi
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