천하天下

As of 2026, the military and political confrontation between the United States and Iran has already moved beyond a mere crisis, becoming a chronic source of instability in Southwest Eurasia. The conflict, which began in late February with a joint strike by the U.S. and Israel, involved massive damage, including the death of the Supreme Leader. Despite a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan in April and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in June, it led to repeated skirmishes over the Strait of Hormuz. In July, the U.S. declared the ceasefire "over" and resumed strikes, effectively entering a long-term standoff characterized by alternating full-scale warfare and limited engagements. The fact that Iran is a full member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) prevents this situation from being confined to a Middle Eastern regional issue. Unlike the Russia-West conflict mediated by Ukraine, which has a proxy war character, the confrontation between Iran and Washington is direct and immediate. This serves as a crucial test of what functions these two organizations can actually perform within an increasingly fragmented international order.

It is necessary to structurally examine the background of the launch of BRICS and SCO. The SCO was launched in Shanghai in 2001. Its initial goals were border stability in Central Asia, cooperation against terrorism and separatism, and filling the security vacuum in the Eurasian interior after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While China and Russia formed the core axis, it had a strong pragmatic character, aiming to simultaneously guarantee the sovereignty and stability of Central Asian countries. BRICS gained momentum immediately after the global financial crisis in 2009. Centered around Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, it started as an economic and financial cooperation framework to expand the voice of non-Western countries in existing international financial institutions and governance structures. Both organizations emerged amidst a growing perception that the unipolar order, which had promised stability and fair leadership after the US-led "War on Terror" and the invasion of Iraq in the 2000s, had failed to deliver sufficiently. It was a period when many countries were developing distrust in the US-centric system.

However, the important point is that the two organizations did not attempt to build a direct and comprehensive alternative to the Western-led system from the outset. The member states' attitudes towards the West varied greatly. While China and Russia had a strong sense of strategic rivalry, India, Brazil, and South Africa, among others, simultaneously valued their economic and technological relationships with the United States and Europe. This reflected growing distrust of Western institutions, but also a pragmatic consideration to allow countries with extremely different stances towards the West to remain within the same cooperative framework, and to avoid alienating the many countries that sought to maintain productive relationships with both China and Russia, and the United States and Western Europe. As a result, the two organizations have maintained a cautious, consensus-based approach. It was rare for public statements to define the West as a fundamental threat to international stability or to strongly assert the urgency of building alternative governance institutions. While their very existence revealed distrust of the post-Cold War order, their actual operations repeatedly showed a contradictory tendency to prioritize coordination over confrontation. It is valid to point out that if member states had fully trusted the leadership of the United States and Europe, there would have been no reason to create frameworks that excluded the West. However, this contradiction is also an inherent limitation of the two organizations.

Iran's official accession further complicated this structure. Iran became a full member of the SCO in 2023 and BRICS in 2024. For Tehran, this was significant in terms of escaping diplomatic isolation and securing its presence on the multilateral stage. However, the fact that Iran is in a direct and long-term confrontation with the United States served as a factor that tested the two organizations' collective response capabilities in security crisis situations. The 2026 incident fully initiated that test.

The current pattern of response clearly demonstrates the limitations of consensus politics. Russia explicitly condemned the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, emphasizing the violation of sovereignty and international law. China, on the other hand, maintained a relatively cautious tone while urging respect for sovereignty, an immediate ceasefire, and the resumption of dialogue. This appears to be a pragmatic calculation, considering its energy imports and economic ties with Gulf nations. India, asserting its strategic autonomy, maintained a balanced stance. While emphasizing dialogue, diplomacy, and an early end to the conflict, it avoided directly condemning any specific party. Some new member states, such as the UAE and Egypt, are in an even more complex position due to their strained relations with Iran or their own security interests. The SCO issued a statement emphasizing the non-use of force, Iran's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and adherence to the UN Charter, and even cited previous declarations to classify military strikes as violations of international law. However, this remained at the level of a political declaration and did not lead to substantive mediation or joint action. BRICS also struggled to formulate a strong, unified position. While it was possible to welcome the April ceasefire and the June MOU, taking actual coordinated political and diplomatic action proved difficult.

This conflict simultaneously poses substantial challenges that neither organization can ignore. The first is energy security. The assumption that the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz will return to their previous state of relative stability has largely lost its realism. With a critical artery of global energy logistics now in a constant state of tension, the impact on energy-import-dependent China and India is far more direct and structural than on resource-rich nations like Russia or the United States. The second is transportation and logistics. Iran holds a key position in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), connecting Russia with the Middle East and South Asia. Persistent instability complicates investment and long-term infrastructure plans, increasing pressure on Central Asian countries to readjust their development strategies. The third issue concerns the US regional alliance system. As Washington escalates its confrontation with Iran, strategic pressure on Israel grows, but wealthy Gulf monarchies do not wish to transform into highly militarized societies like Israel. Each escalation of tension further complicates their strategic calculations, increasing the dual burden of managing security cooperation with the US and economic cooperation with China and Russia simultaneously.

This reality presents both a challenge and an opportunity for BRICS and the SCO. As international affairs shift, there is a growing tendency for the US and Western countries to no longer be perceived as the sole providers of stability and development. Many nations have begun to view them as a source of geopolitical instability, and the prolonged US-Iran confrontation is likely to reinforce this perception by exposing the limits of US diplomatic focus and its capacity for managing multiple crises simultaneously. However, if the two organizations use this as an opportunity for ideological confrontation or excessive institutional intervention, it could instead exacerbate internal divisions. Unilaterally imposing a unified foreign policy among member states undermines the strength of flexibility. This is because the true value of these two organizations lies in providing a platform where countries with diverse interests can cooperate even without a complete political alliance.

In a situation where the consistency of the existing international system is weakening, the usefulness of this model can increase. It can be acknowledged that the relative decline of the Western-centric order is not a temporary phenomenon. However, for BRICS and SCO to effectively utilize that space, they must focus not on artificially creating integration that does not exist, but on materializing the practical interests of member states—such as energy security cooperation, stabilization of transport corridors, diversification of financial and payment systems, and technological and industrial cooperation. Attempts to imitate Western alliances cannot withstand internal heterogeneity. The reality that many member states, including India, UAE, and Egypt, are simultaneously managing their relationships with the United States, as well as strategic competition between China and India, and tensions between Iran and some Gulf states, are structural constraints that make it difficult for the two organizations to transform into an 'anti-Western bloc.'

Ultimately, the prospects of the two organizations depend on whether they can function as a practical framework for member states to hedge and pursue practical interests in a fragmented international environment, rather than on grand rhetoric about being 'builders of an alternative order.' The Iran crisis tested this possibility while clearly revealing its limitations. Consensus-based flexibility is a clear strength, but if it fails to demonstrate action beyond political declarations when the security of a member state is directly threatened, trust will inevitably weaken. If the goal itself is to utilize the strategic space opened up by the relative weakening of Western hegemony, then accumulating achievements of practical cooperation within that space is the most realistic task. When BRICS and SCO move towards expanding the intersection of concrete interests rather than ideological confrontation, they can have meaning as one axis of a new international order.