UAE Crown Prince Meets Iran's Pezeshkian at BRICS Summit — First High-Level Contact Since Abu Dhabi Suspended Trade Ties

On the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan held talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian — the highest-level UAE-Iran contact since the US-Israel-Iran war escalated and since the UAE suspended all trade and financial dealings with Tehran in August. Both sides publicly emphasized reducing tensions, though no changes to the existing trade suspension were announced. Leaders at the summit backed a New Delhi Declaration calling for protecting global trade, supply chains, and energy flows, and for preventing disruption to energy infrastructure and navigation through the Strait of Hormuz — language read by markets as a signal that even Iran's remaining diplomatic partners want the oil-shipping chokepoint stabilized. Pezeshkian used the summit to press Iran's case that the US naval blockade, not Iranian action, is the source of the Hormuz disruption, and said Tehran was finalizing a shared shipping-route arrangement with Oman — index of the economic stakes for India, which sources roughly 30% of its crude through the strait and had flagged the standoff as a summit-defining risk.