As the dark clouds gather

It is strange how big news never seem to make it into the public domain, or even if they do, non-one seems to take any notice (presumably because celebrity breast enlargement operations are so much more facinating). The Iranian oil gambit is probably one of the biggest news stories of the 21st century.In a nutshell, Iran, one of the largest producers of oil in thw world, plans to start selling its oil in euros instead of dollars as of March 2006. For the first time in fifty years it would be possible to buy oil directly in another currency than the almighty dollar. For decades the US dollar value has been boosted by the necessity of the rest of the world to acquire US dollars in huge quantities in order to buy oil that is the lifeblood of human civilization. This has kept US dollar value sky-high and allowed the governments in Washington to reduce taxes at the same time as they generate massive trade deficit which has raked US foreign debt of some 8,000,822,191,149 dollars (and going up by around 1 million every minute). But rest of the world has no choice except to buy dollars and keep the US economy afloat.

Until now.

I quite frankly am not a big fan of Iranian theocracy. The Ayatollahs human rights record is appalling, as is the situation of vast poor masses of Iran. But as far as clever non-military attacks go, this is pure genius. Since rest of the world will no longer need acquire dollars to buy oil, EU, Asia and many other parts of the world will start moving their currency reserves away from US dollars. This has the potential of crushing the value of dollar, especially if countries like Venezuela and Russia join the Iranian oil Bourse.

Quite a few experts seem to agree that United States HAS to go to war to stop the Oil Bourse if it is at all able, or even if it isn’t. If it cannot scrape together enough troops or if the draft is truly politically unacceptable, then it must try to convince Europeans to stop this instead by making sure Iran cannot use Euro as their trade currency. But will EU do the bidding of America? Time will tell. Stretched thin, the US military would need to pacify Iraq completely before it could prepare another major campaign, and Iran could be a tougher nut to crack than Iraq. But the alternatives to US are unthinkable, namely potential loss of their pre-eminence in the world. So no wonder the planners of the Pentagon are burning midnight oil (pun intended).

March 2006 is the month to watch. Much of our future might be decided then.

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