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Since the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, many analysts have rushed to declare that BRICS is little more than an illusion.

Iran joined the grouping as a new member in 2024. Yet BRICS has failed to articulate a unified response to the conflict. While some members—including Brazil and China—have condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks, India has not. South Africa has remained on the fence. For the bloc’s critics, these differences have reinforced a familiar conclusion: BRICS is incoherent and “utterly ineffectual,” as Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume argued last week.

Since the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, many analysts have rushed to declare that BRICS is little more than an illusion.

Iran joined the grouping as a new member in 2024. Yet BRICS has failed to articulate a unified response to the conflict. While some members—including Brazil and China—have condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks, India has not. South Africa has remained on the fence. For the bloc’s critics, these differences have reinforced a familiar conclusion: BRICS is incoherent and “utterly ineffectual,” as Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume argued last week.

That argument rests on a flawed premise: It assumes that BRICS is supposed to behave like a formal alliance with shared positions on security. In reality, BRICS is not a geopolitical bloc—nor has it ever been.

From its earliest days, BRICS has brought together countries with very different geopolitical priorities. Leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, and China first began meeting in 2009 before South Africa joined a year later. Even then, its members did not share a unified worldview. Russia and, to a lesser degree, China have long sought to use the group as a counterweight to the G-7 and the West, especially after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. Brazil, India, and South Africa, meanwhile, have pursued a multialignment strategy.

BRICS has faced criticism from Western observers since its inception. In 2011, Philip Stephens of the Financial Times announced that it was “time to bid farewell” to the “Brics without mortar.” Journalist Martin Wolf asserted in a 2012 interview that BRICS was “not a group” and that its members had “nothing in common whatsoever.” Other commentators have described BRICS as a........

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