SCO and BRICS adopt statements on Iran and sanctions — South China Morning Post
In Kyrgyzstan and India, the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS adopted declarations in September regarding the situation in the Middle East and sanctions policy. The SCO condemned US and Israeli military strikes on Iranian territory, while BRICS criticised unilateral sanctions not approved by the UN Security Council. This was reported by the South China Morning Post.
All 10 member states gathered at the SCO summit in Bishkek, dedicated to the organisation's 25th anniversary. Following the meeting, they adopted 27 documents and the Bishkek Declaration, which described strikes on Iranian territory as a violation of international law. At the same time, the participants did not launch the SCO Development Bank, although the organisation had agreed to establish it a year earlier.
BRICS Declaration
A few days later, all 11 BRICS members unanimously supported the New Delhi Declaration. The document called for maximum restraint in the Middle East, criticised unilateral sanctions without a UN Security Council mandate and addressed the global trade war without naming the United States. At the summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Global South countries to become rule-makers rather than merely accept rules set by others.
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Political scientist and Chinese foreign policy specialist Allen Carlson said that BRICS had evolved from a bloc that was still taking shape into the core of an emerging international order, with China at its centre. In his view, the shift in the balance of global power resulted from both Beijing's actions and Washington's mistakes.
Payment Systems and the Yuan
The publication notes that China is building financial infrastructure that is an alternative to systems linked to the US dollar. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, founded in 2016, has 111 approved members. During its first decade of operation, it approved nearly $70 billion in financing for 361 projects in 40 member states.
China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, CIPS, reported an average daily transaction volume of $134 billion in March. According to SCMP, Iran accepted payments for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz in yuan through Bank Kunlun and CIPS outside the Swift system, or in cryptocurrency. Economist Paul Krugman wrote in a Substack column that the spread of alternative payment channels weakens the United States' ability to track and block international dollar transactions as part of sanctions policy.
