Here is the real reason why the US is preparing to attack Iran (or use Israel as its surrogate to launch the attack). It's not about nuclear weapons. It's all about petrodollars as revealed by the article following this one....
Iran No Longer Accepts U.S. Dollar In Oil Trade
May 1, 2008 12:08 a.m. EST
Tehran, Iran (AHN) - Iran is no longer accepting U.S. dollars for purchases of its oil and is selling the commodity in the world market only in euro and yen.
Cbsnews.com quoted Iranian Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard as saying on Wednesday, "The dollar has totally been removed from Iran's oil transactions. We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies."
The official said that Iran is selling oil to Europe in euro and to Asia in yen.
Iran decided to abandon using the dollar because the depreciation of the U.S. currency is eating away the country's foreign currency reserves.
The move is also a way of skirting Washington's economic sanction against the world's second-largest oil producer for its alleged nuclear bomb program and support of insurgents in Iraq.
Iran's central bank also has cut down on U.S. dollar-denominated foreign money reserves because U.S. and European banks made it difficult for them to transact business in dollars.
Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourseby William Clark
“This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous...Having said that, all options are on the table.”
– President George W. Bush, February 2005
Contemporary warfare has traditionally involved underlying conflicts regarding economics and resources. Today these intertwined conflicts also involve international currencies, and thus increased complexity. Current geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran extend beyond the publicly stated concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions, and likely include a proposed Iranian “petroeuro” system for oil trade.
Similar to the Iraq war, military operations against Iran relate to the macroeconomics of ‘petrodollar recycling’ and the unpublicized but real challenge to U.S. dollar supremacy from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.
It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam’s long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market. Throughout 2004 information provided by former administration insiders revealed the Bush/Cheney administration entered into office with the intention of toppling Saddam Hussein.
Candidly stated, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. government in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency (i.e. “petroeuro”).[3] However, subsequent geopolitical events have exposed neoconservative strategy as fundamentally flawed, with Iran moving towards a petroeuro system for international oil trades, while Russia evaluates this option with the European Union.
In 2003 the global community witnessed a combination of petrodollar warfare and oil depletion warfare. The majority of the world’s governments – especially the E.U., Russia and China – were not amused – and neither are the U.S. soldiers who are currently stationed inside a hostile Iraq. In 2002 I wrote an award-winning online essay that asserted Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced in September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN’s Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq’s oil export currency.
Indeed, my original pre-war hypothesis was validated in a Financial Times article dated June 5, 2003, which confirmed Iraqi oil sales returning to the international markets were once again denominated in U.S. dollars – not euros.
The tender, for which bids are due by June 10, switches the transaction back to dollars -- the international currency of oil sales - despite the greenback's recent fall in value. Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq's oil be sold for euros, a political move, but one that improved Iraq's recent earnings thanks to the rise in the value of the euro against the dollar
The Bush administration implemented this currency transition despite the adverse impact on profits from Iraqi’s export oil sales. (In mid-2003 the euro was valued approx. 13% higher than the dollar, and thus significantly impacted the ability of future oil proceeds to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure). Not surprisingly, this detail has never been mentioned in the five U.S. major media conglomerates who control 90% of information flow in the U.S., but confirmation of this vital fact provides insight into one of the crucial – yet overlooked – rationales for 2003 the Iraq war.
Concerning Iran, recent articles have revealed active Pentagon planning for operations against its suspected nuclear facilities. While the publicly stated reasons for any such overt action will be premised as a consequence of Iran's nuclear ambitions, there are again unspoken macroeconomic drivers underlying the second stage of petrodollar warfare – Iran's upcoming oil bourse. (The word bourse refers to a stock exchange for securities trading, and is derived from the French stock exchange in Paris, the Federation Internationale des Bourses de Valeurs.)
In essence, Iran is about to commit a far greater “offense” than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq’s oil exports in the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006,(actually implemented on May 1, 2008) the Tehran government has plans to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades – using a euro-based international oil-trading mechanism.
The proposed Iranian oil bourse signifies that without some sort of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project of U.S. global domination, Tehran’s objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on dollar supremacy in the crucial international oil market.
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The above clearly shows that Bush wants to attack Iran, not because it might at some distant date develop a nuclear weapon, but because it threatens the supremacy of the US dollar that could lead to financial disaster for our capitalist empire.
Most oil sales throughout the world are denominated in United States dollars (USD). Because most countries rely on oil imports, they are forced to maintain large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue imports. This causes demand for USDs to remain high, regardless of economic conditions in the United States. This allows the US government to gain revenues by issuing bonds at lower interest rates than they otherwise would be able to. As a result the U.S. government can run higher budget deficits at a more sustainable level than can most other countries.
It also means that the price of oil is more stable in the U.S. than anywhere else, since importers do not need to worry about exchange rate fluctuations. Since the U.S. imports a great deal of oil, its markets are heavily reliant on oil and its derivative products (jet fuel, diesel fuel, gasoline, etc.) for their energy needs.
If the euro becomes the trading currency for oil, the U.S. would experience the double whammy of skyrocketing oil prices and an inability to finance its huge deficits, both of which would combine to produce an economic crisis of mammoth proportions.
Political enemies of the United States therefore have an interest in seeing oil denominated in euros or other currencies. In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD. When people say that the Iraq war was about oil, they are only half right. The other half was about keeping the USD as the medium of exchange for oil.
Iran has now opened an oil bourse which does not accept U.S. Dollars. Many fear that it will give added reason for the U.S. to topple the Iranian regime as a means to close the bourse and revert Iran's oil transaction currency to USDs.
