The timing of the Kremlin announcement is interesting given less than 12 hours prior in a Monday afternoon press briefing, national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed that Iran is preparing to transfer "up to several hundred" armed drones to Russia amid possible arms and munitions shortages amid the Ukraine war.
Russia wants to import high-tech weapons from Iran now? I wonder what spin this gets for the domestic Russian audience because that looks weak as fuck. FWIW, I've seen other articles reporting Iran said no, so I guess we'll find out in a few months.
BRICS--and especially if you toss in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and Turkey--really don't have much in common and aren't anything approaching a unified political block. As for the decline of the petrodollar, there have always been apparently reasonable and convincing reasons why it should decline, but I suspect reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. I particularly doubt oil producers or those doing international commerce want to hold capital-controlled Rubles of Renminbi, especially with how fucked up things are in both of those countries right now, so why would the petrodollar collapse now? What's the better alternative?
On a separate note, the mythical BRICS alliance and the collapse of the petrodollar are right up zerohedge's alley (toss in the imminent global economic collapse right around the corner and we have the trifecta), and they've loved reporting stories like this for literally 15+ years. It's their bread and butter.
This would be pretty huge news if Saudi Arabia joined BRICS+ with Iran and Argentina. This is especially interesting timing as Russia and China want to use BRICS currencies as an alternative to SWIFT. This could untie the USD from Saudi oil, killing the petrodollar. It's also doubly interesting timing since Putin is going to Iran to meet with their leaders and Erdogan next week.