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Europe at war with Iran

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The huge North and South Azadegan fields -- 26 billion barrels -- are being exploited by -- who else -- China; China National Petroleum Corporation is developing both, investing $8.4 billion over the next 10 years. As for the Yadavaran field, it is being developed by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation; in four years, it will be producing almost 200,000 barrels a day. And all this without even mentioning the largest gas field in the world -- South Pars, of which Iran holds a great portion, alongside Qatar.

And then there's the crucial petrodollar front. Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), slightly before he was forced to resign as the International Monetary Fund's director general over a sex scandal, was insisting on the end of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, proposing instead the IMF's special drawing rights -- the IMF's virtual currency including the US dollar, euro, pound, yen and yuan.

Well, it's already happening, via other means. Memo to an asleep-at-the-wheel Washington/Brussels axis; China and India are already bypassing US/EU sanctions on Iran.

Three BRICS members (Russia, India and China), plus Japan and Iran -- a mighty mix of the world's largest producers and consumers of energy -- are already trading, or about to trade, in their own currencies. Russia and Iran have just started trading in rials and roubles. All of these powers have bilateral agreements -- inexorably surging to multilateral; and that translates as the US dollar slowly fading as the global reserve currency, with all the seismic consequences this implies.

It's as if a stunned world was watching a ritual seppuku in slow motion committed by the Washington-dominated West.

There is also the auspicious orange in this Year of the Dragon pie -- the upcoming foreign exchange bourse trading in yuan in the City of London. Beijing wants it -- and the City badly wants it. Tehran already sells oil to Beijing in yuan. Think of Iran using the City foreign exchange to use their yuan and thus keep access to all global markets -- no matter the US/EU sanctions/embargo avalanche.

Obviously, City players are aware that a "free trade" yuan bourse in London may play to Iran's advantage; but unlike those morons in Brussels, at least City slickers are aware that business is business.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
 

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