This Week's Flagship Article

Vishwamitra Brief #009: G7 Oil Release, Iraq Withdrawal, Mars Water, Magnetar Candidate and Pompeii

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Vishwamitra Brief Issue #009 | 4 October 2026 The week offered a useful test of how claims survive contact with evidence: a G7 oil release, an American military exit from Iraq, attacks on Kyiv's bridges, and new measurements of Mars, a neutron-star merger and Vesuvius. By Santhosh Vishwamitra Strategic Briefing The G7 agreed on 2 October to coordinate the release of 100 million barrels of crude and diesel through the International Energy Agency over four months, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded into the first 20 days. The more revealing figure is 75 million barrels. The IEA said that 325 million barrels had been released from the 400 million barrels pledged in March. It remains unclear whether the new G7 release includes that outstanding amount or comes on top of it. This issue covers 28 September to 4 October 2026. Washington and its allies argued over fuel, the last US troops left Iraq, and Russian strikes damaged Kyiv's bridges. At...
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BRICS Is Silent While Iran Burns — And Quietly Building a Dollar Alternative | Inside Stories

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BRICS Is Silent While One of Its Own Burns — And Quietly Building a Dollar Alternative | Inside Stories
Inside Stories  ·  Global Politics Meets Perspective
BRICS Digest
Silence, fractures, and a quiet war on the dollar
March 7, 2026  ·  Special Edition
Breaking
BRICS issues no collective statement as member Iran is bombed for 8 straight days India chairs BRICS in 2026 — and has said nothing about the war on a fellow member BRICS Pay enters operational phase — linking national digital currencies across 11 nations Brazil, Russia, China individually condemn Iran strikes — bloc officially silent Modi visited Israel and declared India stands "firmly with Israel" days before strikes began BRICS is silent while one of its own burns — and quietly building a dollar alternative BRICS issues no collective statement as member Iran is bombed for 8 straight days India chairs BRICS in 2026 — and has said nothing about the war on a fellow member BRICS Pay enters operational phase — linking national digital currencies across 11 nations Brazil, Russia, China individually condemn Iran strikes — bloc officially silent Modi visited Israel and declared India stands "firmly with Israel" days before strikes began

BRICS is supposed to be the voice of the Global South. This week, when one of its own members was bombed, that voice went completely silent.

Santhosh Vishwamitra · March 7, 2026
Story 01 BRICS  ·  India  ·  Iran  ·  Geopolitics

BRICS Is Watching Iran Burn — and Saying Absolutely Nothing

A member of the bloc has been bombed for eight days. Over 1,200 people are dead. The group that calls itself the voice of the Global South has not issued a single collective statement. India, which chairs BRICS in 2026, is the reason why.

Iran joined BRICS in January 2024. It is a full permanent member of a bloc that now includes 11 nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran. When the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, killing Iran's Supreme Leader and over 1,200 people in eight days of strikes, BRICS did not issue a single collective statement. Not one. The contrast with last year is sharp: when a shorter Israeli-Iranian exchange occurred in June 2025 under Brazil's chairmanship, BRICS condemned the attacks within days as a violation of international law.

This time, India chairs the bloc. And New Delhi has a problem. On February 25–26, just three days before the strikes began, PM Modi was in Jerusalem addressing the Knesset — declaring that "India stands with Israel, firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond." He signed defence and AI agreements and elevated the relationship to a Special Strategic Partnership. On March 1, India condemned Iran's retaliatory missile strikes on the UAE. India has said nothing about the original US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Three founding BRICS members — Brazil, Russia, and South Africa — have independently condemned the war. The bloc as a whole has not. India's chair position is the reason.

BRICS spoke within days when Brazil chaired and Iran was struck. Under India's chair, eight days in, it has said nothing.

Analysts are calling this the most credibility-damaging moment in BRICS history. A Ukrainian diplomat told Ukrinform that the bloc has been effectively "sidelined" — its expansion, rather than strengthening it, has made consensus impossible. The UAE and Saudi Arabia — both BRICS members — have economic interests in Israel. India has security and trade interests with both Israel and the US. None of BRICS's collective decisions are binding on member states, which is precisely why the bloc can exist with such fundamentally contradictory national interests — and precisely why it cannot function in a genuine crisis. India's BRICS summit in New Delhi is scheduled for September 2026. What credibility the bloc arrives with is now a serious open question.

My Take

I support Modi and I think India's deepening relationship with Israel is strategically sound — Israel is a genuine tech and defence partner, and those ties matter. But holding the BRICS chair while a fellow member is being bombed and saying nothing is not strategic autonomy. It is paralysis dressed as neutrality. The opposition criticism here is fair. India cannot claim to lead the Global South and simultaneously refuse to speak when that South's interests demand a voice. Modi's government needs to find a way to hold both positions — the Israel partnership and the BRICS chair role — without letting one completely hollow out the other. Right now, it is not managing that balance well.

Story 02 BRICS  ·  Economy  ·  Technology  ·  Global Politics

While the Bloc Stays Quiet, BRICS Pay Is Quietly Moving

The geopolitical noise around BRICS is obscuring a more consequential story: the bloc's payment system is entering its operational phase in 2026 — and if it works, it will be the most significant challenge to dollar dominance since Bretton Woods.

BRICS Pay — a decentralised cross-border payment platform linking the national digital currencies and payment systems of BRICS member states — is moving from pilot to operational phase in 2026. The system is built on a Decentralised Cross-border Messaging System (DCMS), an architecture deliberately designed so that no single authority can sanction or shut it down. It connects India's UPI, Brazil's Pix, Russia's SPFS, and China's CIPS into one interoperable network, processing up to 20,000 transactions per second. The Indian government — as 2026 chair — is pushing CBDC interoperability as a summit agenda item in New Delhi in September, where linking national digital currencies for trade and tourism payments will be formally proposed.

The system's appeal is practical, not ideological. Intra-BRICS trade settled in local currencies has already risen from 65% to 90% in two years — driven largely by Russia-China energy deals and India-UAE trade corridors. The current target is not to replace the dollar globally but to build parallel rails for member nations to trade among themselves without needing dollar clearing or SWIFT authorisation. That distinction is important: this is not a dramatic dollar-collapse scenario. It is a slow, structural erosion of dollar dependency in a bloc that now represents 45% of the world's population and over a third of global crude oil production.

Trump has already threatened 100% tariffs on BRICS nations that develop their own currency — a threat he later walked back. But BRICS Pay is not a currency. It is infrastructure. And infrastructure is much harder to threaten away with tariffs. The Iran war has added unexpected urgency: with Iranian barrels off the market and Russian oil under sanction, energy-importing BRICS members like India and China have accelerated bilateral settlement arrangements. Every transaction that settles outside the dollar system is one more proof of concept for the alternative rails being built.

My Take

BRICS Pay is not going to kill the dollar next year. Or the year after. But that is not the point. The point is that the infrastructure is being built now — quietly, practically, without making it easy for Washington to find a pressure point to attack. For India specifically, this is one of the most significant economic initiatives the country is involved in. India's UPI model is the technical backbone of the entire concept. If BRICS Pay scales, India sits at the centre of a parallel global financial architecture serving nearly half the world. That is not a small thing. The tragedy is that India's political paralysis over BRICS right now — the silence on Iran — risks undermining its own standing inside the very institution where it holds the most leverage.

Sources and References

. . .

Inside Stories — where global politics meets perspective, and no one gets to hide behind vague narratives.

Santhosh Vishwamitra
Founder, SVM Labs
santhoshvishwamitrablog.wordpress.com

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