Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian has reignited the debate on establishing a credible alternative to the US dollar within the BRICS grouping, amid rising tensions with Washington and efforts to deepen financial integration beyond mere currency issuance.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has added fresh energy to an old argument inside the BRICS grouping: whether the bloc can build a serious alternative to the dollar. Speaking in India around the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Pezeshkian backed a shift away from dependence on the US currency and urged members to use their own currencies for trade. His remarks come at a moment when Washington has been warning of steep tariffs on countries that try to weaken the dollar’s role in global commerce.
The debate is not new. The New Development Bank, the bloc’s lender, was created in 2014 at the Fortaleza summit with an initial capital base of $100 billion, and its structure was designed to avoid the kind of single-country veto power seen at the IMF or World Bank. According to the bank’s own framework, founding members retain a minimum 55% share even as new members join. The institution, headquartered in Shanghai, has since expanded beyond the original five members, with regional offices in places including Johannesburg and São Paulo.
The bank has already taken modest steps to reduce reliance on the dollar by issuing bonds in local currencies such as the yuan, rupee, real and rand. But that remains a long way from creating a fully fledged substitute for the greenback. The broader BRICS bloc is large , its members account for roughly half the world’s population and about 30% of global nominal GDP, with a bigger share measured by purchasing power , yet size alone does not make a currency regime. In practice, a credible alternative would require deeper financial integration, trusted settlement systems and far more liquid capital markets.
Oil is another reason the discussion keeps resurfacing. Data from the US Energy Information Administration show that the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia were among the world’s biggest crude producers in 2023, while the top 10 producers together accounted for 73% of global output. Separate BRICS-focused data for 2025 show Russia and Saudi Arabia as the bloc’s largest oil producers, underlining why members that control major energy flows are keen to settle more trade in their own currencies. That matters because energy trade is one of the clearest channels through which dollar dependence can be reduced.
For Donald Trump, however, this is not just a technical financial question. His administration has repeatedly treated de-dollarisation as a direct challenge to US economic power, including the influence the dollar gives Washington over sanctions, tariffs and global pricing. Trump has threatened punitive tariffs on countries seen as working to undermine the dollar, and he has dismissed BRICS as politically weak. Yet the bloc’s leaders appear intent on pressing ahead, however gradual the process may be, and the latest gathering in India suggests the argument is becoming more, not less, pointed.
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