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India’s diplomacy from bilateral to regional facilitation
This article is authored by Alvite Ningthoujam and Bhoomi Shah.
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Forging a consensus and adopting a collectively agreed declaration at the BRICS Summit 2026 in New Delhi was arguably the organisation's most significant breakthrough — notable precisely because its member states carry entrenched political differences and competing positions on numerous regional and geopolitical issues. That Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two regional rivals, both backed this joint declaration itself a major achievement for India’s diplomacy, underscoring New Delhi’s ability to bring divergent voices to common ground even before the two sides met separately. The outcome signals India's capacity to bridge such fault lines at a moment when the global order itself is fragmenting, marked by conventional conflict alongside non-traditional economic warfare: The Russia-Ukraine war, the ongoing West Asian conflict, and trade-tariff disputes between the US and countries across the globe. Against this backdrop, an equally consequential outcome of the summit was the Iran-UAE bilateral meeting on the sidelines.
This summit unfolds amid diverging assessments of India's foreign policy, its achievements as well as its limitations. Many, both within India and abroad, credit New Delhi with successfully exercising strategic autonomy, maintaining a delicate balance with partners such as Israel, Iran and the GCC States, several of whom remain at war with one another. Others, however, question India's political posture in the region, arguing that its engagement remains largely transactional in character, oriented primarily toward strengthening bilateral relations rather than fostering a more holistic regional presence. The Tehran-Abu Dhabi development, witnessed in New Delhi, should dispel at least some of these doubts, for it demonstrates India's diplomatic capacity to bring two warring parties toward mutual restraint. Such restraint bears significantly on their respective national interests and economies, while also carrying wider geopolitical repercussions, particularly for regional economic and energy security.
India's engagements with the wider West Asian region are, admittedly, transactional, anchored primarily in economic and energy cooperation, although respective bilateral cooperation is increasingly expanding into other domains as well. Yet the strong bilateral political foundations New Delhi has cultivated since 2014 — evident in its upward trajectory of ties with the GCC States, Israel and Jordan, and its significant potential to further strengthen relations with Iran — played an instrumental role in producing this outcome at the summit. The consultative and negotiating skills of the diplomats involved deserve acknowledgement, for they may well set a precedent for India's foreign policy in future crises involving partners critical to its interests. In other words, the breakthrough at Bharat Mandapam should lend New Delhi the confidence to pursue politico-diplomatic efforts that, at minimum, offer a platform to parties locked in active conflict.
Several developments over the past two years already hinted at steps taken by New Delhi toward more holistic engagement with a region engulfed in turmoil. In September 2024, India participated in the first India-GCC Joint Ministerial Meeting for Strategic Dialogue in Riyadh, underscoring the importance accorded to this 'extended neighbourhood' (West Asia), home to nearly ten million Indian workers and the source of a majority of India's crude oil (40%), LNG (60%) and LPG (90%) imports. Months later, on January 31, 2026, India hosted the second India-Arab Foreign Ministers' Meeting, convened after a ten-year gap and attended by foreign ministers from all twenty-two Arab League states, culminating in the adoption of the Delhi Declaration. Taken together, these developments suggest that the Iran-UAE breakthrough was not an isolated diplomatic accident, but the product of incremental institution-building through which New Delhi steadily accumulated the standing and access required to convene actors as antagonistic as Tehran and Abu Dhabi.
Breakthroughs of this kind, achieved amid active regional turmoil, should embolden India to move beyond the role of occasional convenor toward that of a deliberate platform-provider for regional dialogue. That the Iran-UAE meeting took place on the margins of a multilateral summit does not necessarily mean India brokered consensus between the two; more modestly, it shows that New Delhi possesses the neutrality both rivals were willing to draw upon. India must now build on this standing, positioning itself as a space where adversarial states can engage without the pressure of formal mediation, an approach that neither over-commits India to others' disputes nor squanders the trust it has earned. Formalising such a role, through recurring dialogue platforms rather than one-off occasions, would also strengthen India's standing within the Global South, where the ability to facilitate cooperation among states with divergent interests remains central to the legitimacy of groupings such as BRICS.
The overall success of the BRICS Summit, and this thaw between Iran and the UAE in particular, is likely to strengthen India's ties both with fellow member states and with West Asian countries more broadly. New Delhi's role in bringing two regional foes to the table may also be of interest to other West Asian States, including Israel, which has engaged in direct military confrontation with Iran between 2024 and 2026. A reduction in regional tensions, even between Iran and a third party, arguably serves Israel's broader interest in a less volatile neighbourhood, even as its own adversarial relationship with Tehran remains unresolved. It is India's neutrality — an attribute few had seriously questioned — that has enabled this shift, allowing New Delhi to convert regional coldness into the beginnings of a thaw. This is not to suggest, however, that India can or should substitute for the parties themselves. While New Delhi may increasingly offer its good offices to warring states, the substantive work of resolving their disputes must remain with the conflicting parties; India's role lies in creating the conditions for dialogue, not in dictating its outcome.
That the Iran-UAE breakthrough occurred on the margins of a BRICS summit should not be treated as incidental. It offers India, in particular, a template worth building on, and BRICS members more broadly an opportunity to consider whether their own gatherings could be leveraged more deliberately for such diplomatic openings, rather than treating them as fortunate by-products of unrelated proceedings. For India, this calls for moving toward more structured, sustained channels of dialogue, so as to bring at least some semblance of normalcy to conflict-ridden corners of West Asia. In doing so, India would not merely be seizing a moment of diplomatic fortune, but affirming its growing credentials as an emerging power capable of turning rivalry into restraint.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Alvite Ningthoujam, deputy director & assistant frofessor, Symbiosis School of International Studies, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune and Bhoomi Shah, senior threat intelligence analyst.
