Blame-free wording buys BRICS the Iran-UAE consensus its foreign ministers missed in May

Four months separated the two attempts ^[17]. The difference between them is attribution: in May the ministers had to write about a fight between two of their own members and produced nothing ^[6]. In Delhi the leaders wrote about the same conflict and did not name either side ^[5].

The sanctions line is built the same way. The leaders stressed their opposition to unilateral sanctions that violate international law ^[7], and Seoul Economic Daily reads that as aimed at both US sanctions on Iran and the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after the war in Ukraine ^[19]. One sentence covering two members' grievances asks neither of them to concede. The trade language is more specific, with serious concern over the growing use of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures that distort trade and run counter to WTO rules ^[8].

Neither account describes a settlement channel, a fund or a date attached to any of it ^[14]. Nothing in it obliges a signatory to do anything.

The conduct that would test a sanctions regime is bilateral. Semafor reports that India, this year's chair ^[2], has long sought to deepen relations with the US but is unlikely to meet Washington's demands to curb its relations with Moscow ^[12]. It is also reportedly set to propose a strategic economic dialogue with Beijing ^[18].

Xi Jinping's business in Delhi was bilateral too. The trip was his first to India in seven years, about a year after he met Narendra Modi in Tianjin ^[9]. Xi said China and India are cooperative partners and not rivals, and proposed managing the border issue alongside bilateral relations while expanding economic and people-to-people exchanges ^[10]. He and Modi told Vladimir Putin they were willing to play a mediating role in resolving the situation in Ukraine ^[11].

The two accounts do not sit easily together. Seoul Economic Daily has the trade paragraph sharpening the bloc's pushback against Washington ^[15]. Semafor has the Delhi talks pointing to India's attempt to balance ties with global powers ^[16], and sets that beside Canada strengthening ties with European and African nations, Qatar's prime minister visiting China, and Vietnam's leader visiting Russia, France, the US and Canada this month ^[13].

In my view the blameless formula holds, because attribution is the one thing two members that have clashed militarily several times cannot both sign ^[1]. The counter-thesis has a real basis: the UAE put its name to a line read as aimed at US sanctions on Iran ^[19], and if that survives the next exchange of fire, the bloc's cohesion is worth more than the drafting cost implies. A named instrument with a number on it, or a member publicly declining to enforce a specific designation, would settle which of those it is.