Jaishankar Holds Bilateral Meet with Iran's Araghchi, Discuss West Asia Crisis

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi held talks in New Delhi on Friday, using the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting as a platform to discuss regional instability, sanctions pressures and shifting alliances, as India sought to manage tensions in West Asia and a more polarised global environment.

The meeting took place while India hosted the two-day BRICS ministerial on 14 and 15 May, with New Delhi presenting the forum as an important venue for coordination on diplomacy, security and crisis management as conflicts and rivalries intensified across West Asia, Eastern Europe and the wider Indo-Pacific region.

BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting context and growing strategic weight

Senior diplomats from key powers gathered for the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting as the grouping, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa along with new members, increasingly positioned itself as a counterweight to Western-led political and economic structures, giving India space to act as a bridge among competing global interests.

For New Delhi, the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting also offered a chance to highlight dialogue on trade, security and strategic cooperation, while underlining India’s desire to balance relationships with diverse partners, including Iran, at a time when regional tensions, sanctions-related disputes and changing power equations were reshaping engagement across Asia and the Middle East.

India-Iran ties at the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting

The bilateral discussion between Jaishankar and Araghchi gained added importance because India and Iran shared deep civilisational links and worked together on connectivity, energy, trade and regional security, and both sides now faced fast-moving events in West Asia which demanded closer diplomatic coordination within and beyond the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting.

Ahead of the Jaishankar-Araghchi talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Araghchi in New Delhi on Thursday on the sidelines of the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting, an interaction confirmed by the Iranian Embassy in India through a post on X, signalling that leaders in both capitals were seeking to strengthen political engagement despite surrounding uncertainty.

Araghchi’s criticism of Washington at BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting

During the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting, Araghchi used his address to strongly criticise United States policies and called for joint action against what was described as American pressure tactics, arguing that many states in the room had experienced similar coercive steps and should react collectively through the BRICS platform.

"To virtually everyone in this room, our resistance against US bullying is not an unfamiliar battle," Araghchi said during his address.

Araghchi stated that these methods belonged in the "dustbin of history" and linked them to the behaviour of declining powers, cautioning that governments losing influence often adopted sharper postures as they tried to retain control over the international order.

"History has shown that empires in decline will stop at nothing to arrest their inevitable fates. A wounded animal will desperately claw and roar on its way down," he added.

As discussions continued at the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting, India used its position as host to promote dialogue across divides, maintain channels with Iran and other partners and underline support for stability in regions such as West Asia, even as rival blocs and sanctions disputes kept reshaping diplomatic choices for many countries represented in New Delhi.