India, Sept. 20 -- The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi was less a diplomatic gathering than a high-voltage stage for the world's biggest geopolitical contradictions. Under the lights of Bharat Mandapam, India hosted an extraordinary cast of presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers, from Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Masoud Pezeshkian to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Prabowo Subianto, Cyril Ramaphosa and Brazil's Mauro Vieira at a moment of extraordinary geopolitical turbulence. And nowhere was that turbulence more visible than in West Asia. With Iran and the UAE sitting around the same table even as war raged across the region, the summit offered a rare room in which adversaries and uneasy partners could, at least for two days, sit down...