All Eyes Are on Rio - EIRNS

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Jul. 05, 2025 EST - The president of the New Development Bank (NDB), formed by members of the BRICS, Dilma Rousseff, speaks to the press with the board of directors during the 10th Annual Meeting, in Copacabana. Photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil

There are a number of strategic factors which led to President Trump’s game-changing decision to bomb the nuclear facilities of Iran on June 22—an action which the British and their American war party allies induced Trump to take, and which violated all international law and the U.S. Constitution as well, and which opened up a Pandora’s Box of global lawlessness.

One key factor was the need to send a clear, mafia-style message to the nations of the Global South on the eve of the July 6-7 summit of the BRICS nations, now getting underway in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Iran is a member of the BRICS, and like most of its fellow developing sector nations, it has adamantly defended its right not only to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but to all technological advances needed for the sovereign development of its people. These nations are demanding an end to 500 years of colonial policies—while not yet clearly envisioning what the future system should look like. What the bankers understand is that this would mean the end of their system, and they intend to stop it at all costs—up to and including nuclear war.

A spokesman for the U.K.’s Chatham House (aka Royal Institute of International Affairs), on July 2 spelled out the financial Establishment’s policy towards the BRICS bluntly: “Brazil’s BRICS agenda may be hard to accomplish after the Iran–Israel war.… Coming just after the Israeli and US bombing of Iran, the summit will present the first real test of the coalition.” In other words, if you dare to demand development, you will get the Iran treatment.

But it will not be so easy to cow and silence the 54% of the human race—4.45 billion people—who are represented in the 20 nations that now make up the BRICS. Brazilian President Lula, the host of the summit, delivered a speech on July 4 to the annual meeting of the BRICS New Development Bank, also held in Rio, in which he restated his standing demand that the system which has produced poverty, wars, and massive indebtedness must be replaced by “a reformed financial architecture.” The BRICS must “show the world that it is possible to create a new financing model, without conditionalities” to channel credit to productive development projects, rather than speculation.

Lula’s approach is akin to that of Russian President Putin, who issued a call at the end of the 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan for the creation of “New Investment Platforms” to get around the bankruptcy of the dollar-denominated system, with its $2 quadrillion in speculative financial assets, and create productive credit for the development of the Global South. Although there is much ado in the Western media about the fact that Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi will not be attending the Rio summit in person, the fact is that Putin and Xi recently discussed making the New Investment Platforms (NIP) proposal a central topic of discussion at Rio. As Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov reported on June 19, Putin and Xi in a recent phone conversation discussed “promoting Russian initiatives that were put forward at last year’s BRICS summit in Kazan … in particular, a new investment platform. Its task is to promote the economic growth of our countries and partners among representatives of the Global South.” Ushakov explained.

The Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization have long maintained that the best policy for the United States and Western Europe is to join with the BRICS in creating such a new, development-oriented system, rather than remain under the yoke of the collapsing Wall Street system. All eyes are properly on Rio over the next few days, to see what steps the BRICS take towards the needed new international security and development architecture.