By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

 

This year, two important international or more properly global blocs, having some common members, held their summits to emphasize each other’s importance on the world scene, with the US, Canada, and West European regimes, along with Australia and Japan, feeling overconfident of their established economic power and, of course, success for the G-20 group of which they were the exclusive domineering members. 

It didn’t happen, and the other bloc called “BRICS” of which four of their G-20 colleagues – Russia, China, Brazil, and India – were founding members seeking an alternate world order, emerged successful.

India, which actively participated in the Johannesburg Summit in South Africa in August and endorsed the membership of six new countries to the BRICS – Iran, Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia and G-20 colleagues Argentina and Saudi Arabia – played host to the G-20 Summit in September in New Delhi where among others it also invited BRICS’ new entrants Egypt and the UAE as guests, was undoubtedly the beneficiary of both the top level global events.

The western bloc of the G-20, however, clearly flopped despite being attended by leaders of the ‘Big 5’ economies, that is, the US, Germany, Japan, Britain, and France, largely because of being snubbed by Russia and China, which are intent on building a new world order.

The western media had propagandized on the ‘coming doom’ of the BRICS, because of what it called disputes between India and China, and the success of the G-20 because of what it felt pride of US economic-political clout, but the result was the opposite. 

BRICS showed its vitality by keeping differences in the background and admitting six new members from January 2024, while announcing that 20 more countries are currently hoping for admission in the future.

On the other hand, the G-20 Summit, instead of making the much talked about comeback after the recent challenges to western dominance from countries known as the “Global South”, not only failed to impose its worldview but also lost ground as the final communique although calling for end of the NATO war in Ukraine, did not endorse Washington’s blaming of Moscow as the aggressor.

Whatever the complications for Washington and its comrades-in-crimes against the free world, for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the presence of its president at the Johannesburg Summit as the special guest and his memorable speech, spelled an undeniable success.

US sanctions, or more properly economic terrorism, have been busted and as Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Ibrahim Raisi has stated, Tehran has already started playing a pivotal role as the strategic link of the North-South international trade transit corridor. 

Trade has begun to flow in huge quantity from the Baltic coast of Russia and countries of northern Europe to the ports of India and beyond through the land bridge called Iran, much to the exasperation of Washington.

Iran, through its expanding rail and road networks with international links has also become an indispensable transit route with all its benefits for the flow of the growing Russian exports to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait through Bandar Abbas and other seaports on the Persian Gulf.

All this could be called economic bonanza for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which possess varied and extensive natural resources, coupled with the scientific and industrial skills of its people, who have made the country the paramount political and military power in the region with its wielding of positive influence on the countries of the neighbourhood and beyond, including its policy of building relations with all, with firm opposition to American hegemony, Zionism, and the Takfiri terrorism sponsored by these two regimes.