Tehran moves closer to confrontation with U.S.
By Jerome R. Corsi
Iran today announced a decision to end all oil sales in dollar transactions, moving one step closer to confrontation with the United States.
Iranian oil minister Gholam Hussein Nozari told the press the dollar is not considered a trustworthy currency any more, considering dollar depreciation and the dollar losses experienced by crude-oil exporting countries, according to a report published Saturday by the Iranian Student News Agency, or ISNA, in Tehran.  
Nozari also strongly suggested OPEC should move to a trustworthy currency to stop the loss of oil exporting countries, according to the ISNA report.
OPEC's next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 2 in Vienna.
Iran currently has a proposal before OPEC recommending that OPEC oil-exporting countries move to sell oil in a basket of currencies, rather than dollars.  
Nozari also told the ISNA that Iran plans to fulfill the Sinopec Chinese Company's recent request to purchase more Iranian oil.
In April, WND reported Iran successfully pressured China to begin paying for Iranian oil in euros, not dollars.
At the Abu Dhabi summit last week, OPEC decided not to increase production, concluding there is currently enough oil in world supplies to handle winter demand.
Iran is the world's fourth largest producer of oil, producing 4.1 million barrels of oil per day.
WND previously reported Iran and Venezuela have joined forces in an effort to undermine the U.S. dollar.
In October 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela was ready to move the country's foreign exchange holdings out of the dollar and into the euro. He also called for the creation of a South American central bank designed to hold in euros all the foreign exchange holdings of the participating countries.
WND also reported Iran is seriously considering establishing an Iranian Oil Bourse (or Iranian Oil Exchange) with the goal of establishing competition with the New York Mercantile Exchange, NYMEX, and London's International Petroleum Exchange, or IPE.
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