Iran stops selling oil in U.S. dollars -report

[2-0-Sixx]

This is a couple days old. Any further details? When do the bombs start to drop?

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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has completely stopped selling any of its oil for U.S. dollars, an Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing the oil minister of the world's fourth-largest crude producer.
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The ISNA news agency did not give a direct quote from Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. A senior oil official last month said "nearly all" of Iran's crude oil sales were now being paid for in non-U.S. currencies.

For nearly two years, OPEC's second biggest producer has been reducing its exposure to the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, has called the U.S. currency a "worthless piece of paper."

Foes since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme as well as over policy in Iraq.

"In line with the policy of selling crude oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, currently the sale of our country's oil in U.S. dollars has been completely eliminated," ISNA reported after talking with Nozari.

Nozari told ISNA: "In regards to the decrease in the dollar's value and the loss exporters of crude oil have endured from this trend, the dollar is no longer a reliable currency."

"This is why, at the meeting of the heads of states, Iran proposed to OPEC members that a currency (for oil exports) would be determined that would be reliable and would not cause any loss to exporter countries," he said.

At a November summit of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries heads of state, Iran suggested oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than dollars, but failed to win over other members except Venezuela.

Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, are vocal critics of U.S. influence in the world.

Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of the state owned National Iranian Oil Company, last month told Reuters that most of Iran's oil export earnings were in euros, with some in yen.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian, writing by Fredrik Dahl, editing by Anthony Barker)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071208/tpl-uk-iran-oil-dollar-02bfc7e_1.html

 

[Stealth]

So we get attacked by terrorists. We attack Afghanistan and the Taliban. At some point we decide that Saddam Hussein has WMDs. We take a 15 year old UN Resolution and decide that since they haven't substantially complied, we have the right to invade their country. We go in, take over their government, kill their leader, and install a puppet government in the only country in the middle east powerful enough to counter Iran's influence. Then we say Iran is the next big threat. We say they have WMD. The WMD's aren't there. We look like fucking idiots again. And now he's trying to devalue the dollar since its worth shit right now anyways.

I know the dude said the Holocaust didn't exist and his country doesn't have homosexuals and he wants to exterminate Israel, but I can't help but feel like we deserve this.

 

[JoMoDo]

I bet there will be an internal revolution in Iran against the Islamic Fundamentalists before any western intervention.

 

[ColdBlooded]

No internal revolution before U.S. bombing. No U.S. bombing this year.

 

[nhojsmith]

iran is pissed cause opec wouldnt side with them. opec said we take dollars bitch, little mahmoud and chavez are having a bad month. fools gotta do whatever he can to take attention away from his failing economy, the ticket that he ran on to get elected, midget ass muthafucker. and "we look like idiots" speak for yourself.

 

[Syko Sniper]

the us administration are idiots, over 1 million iraqis dead and thousands of soldiers, for WMD's that don't exist.

 

[Stealth]

I was speaking for myself

 

[MaddDogg]

No internal revolution before U.S. bombing. No U.S. bombing this year.

I second that. As if we didn't have credibility before, that report that says they dropped their nuclear program in late 03' has ruined any chance of a NATO effort.

 

[I AM]

I know the dude said the Holocaust didn't exist and his country doesn't have homosexuals and he wants to exterminate Israel, but I can't help but feel like we deserve this.

We, not so much. The principles that the leaders of our country are following, and those leaders themselves, yeah they deserve it.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, has called the U.S. currency a "worthless piece of paper."

That's what ALL money is. Fucking paper, it's not worth shit. I agree with him on that one. I didn't know he said the holocaust didn't happen, that's some shit.

In all honesty, I think it's good that they aren't using the US dollar. This country deserves a royal ass fucking for what it's done to the rest of the world (in the past, and over the last 5-6 years). It'll be interesting when our country goes into recession, I wonder if the dollar is going to keep falling...until it's worth less than the peso. That's when we're fucked. Although, we are getting there, since Canada's loon (that's their dollar i think?) is now worth more than the US dollar...

 

[I AM]

AND BUSH STILL TALKS IN A SPEECH THAT IRAN IS BUILDING NUKES, EVEN AFTER THAT REPORT THAT SAYS THEY CUT BACK....WHAT A TWISTED FUCKIN ADMINISTRATION...BRAINWASH THE BRAINWASHED A LIL MORE

I was watching the PBS (public broadcasting) the other night and one of the officials from Iran was talking...and the host asked about nukes, and dude said they aren't trying to build bombs, they're just tryin to create nuclear (did i spell that right? ha) energy.

but the average citizen will never really "know" what is going on, who agrees with what, or what's going to be done, etc. people have too many hidden agendas to really accomplish something worth while..that would help the people who will be living in our country (born in or moved here) in 50 years.

 

[evilone]

We wont go to war there for a while the big $$$ in government need to make a killing from the oil gouging first like they aint already though

 

[nhojsmith]

do some of you make an actual effort to be this stupid? speaking of brainwashed some of you actually make me sick, because i know you are not the only ones this completely fucking dumb.

let me get this straight, the same agencies and intelligence community that told you there were WMD in iraq (you railed on bush saying he was full of shit and lying even though the democrats based their approval for the war on this information) comes and says Iran stopped trying to produce warheads and you all come out misinterpret it and you still take it as the gospel and use it to rail against the administration again. lmfao. here if any of you bipolar jackasses can even read, see what henry kissinger said about the report...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../12/12/AR2007121202331.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

 

[rekomstop]

can ya get a newspaper not owned by murdoch to report the same findings? and not written by Kissinger himself.
i'm not tryin to say anything, just asking for articles to back it up..

 

[2-0-Sixx]

LMAO@ posting an article written by Henry fucking Kissinger!! Well that settles everything!

 

[GTS]

LMAO@ posting an article written by Henry fucking Kissinger!! Well that settles everything!

lollll
ya cause he's a very truthful person without an agenda.

information that is released to the public has major holes and flaws and is released for a reason. Scary to think about all the info that is classified( i do understand the need for it but still is scary).

 

[Stealth]

Henry Kissinger, the same man who won't leave the United States because he's afraid he'll be put in front of a foreign or international tribunal.

 

[nhojsmith]

ok so you attack his character as if that means what he says is false. the key thing he says refers to the footnote in the actual report. are you saying that is a lie? but go agead and forget about that, how the fuck do you jump from "they stopped their official nuclear warhead program in 2003" to "iran is no threat bush is a liar again". lol, again some of you are the same people who believe that the US government is under these massive conspiracies, but then blindly accept something like this, released by the government!!! as proof of the government conspiracy, it is fucking amazing the lapses in judgement and logic you suffer. the same media that releases this information, you all take it as the gospel, and you still dont reconcile the fact that you are now accepting the findings as facts from the same agencies that you have all been calling liars for the last 6 years. who really has the agenda?

 

[nhojsmith]

Arab take on NIE report: What in the world is going on?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Growing up in Minnesota, one of my favorite things was going to the state fair each summer and watching the guy who would guess your weight within 5 pounds. If you fooled him, you won a stuffed animal.

Out here on the Persian Gulf, where small countries learn quickly how to survive large predators, they've developed a similar skill: They can calculate a country's power within 5 pounds, just by looking at it. If they're wrong, they end up as a stuffed animal.

Right now, the Arab Gulf states are all sizing up America, their protector, and are wondering just how much Uncle Sam weighs in the standoff with Iran -- and whether it will be enough to keep Iran at bay.

I've been at a security conference in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain, attended by defense officials and analysts from all over the world, and all the buzz has about been the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. It has left every Arab and European expert I've spoken to baffled -- not in its conclusions, but by why those conclusions were framed in a way that is sure to reduce America's leverage to negotiate with Tehran.

The Gulf Arabs feel like they have this neighbor who has been a drug dealer for 18 years. Recently, this neighbor has been very visibly growing poppies for heroin in his backyard in violation of the law. He's also been buying bigger and better trucks to deliver drugs. You can see them parked in his driveway.

In the past year, though, because of increased police patrols and all the neighbors threatening to do something, this suspicious character has shut down the laboratory in his basement to convert poppies into heroin. In the wake of that, the police declared that he is no longer a drug dealer.

"But wait," say the Gulf Arabs, "he's still growing poppies. He was using them for heroin right up to 2003. Now he says he's in the flower business. He's not in the flower business. He's dealing drugs. And he's still expanding the truck fleet to deliver them. How can you say he's no longer a drug dealer?"

Sorry, say the police. We have a very technical, legal definition of drug-dealing, and your neighbor no longer fits it.

That's basically what has happened between the U.S. and Iran -- just substitute enriched uranium for poppies. Now, Bush officials are trying to tell everyone: "No, no, Iran is still dangerous. You have to keep the coalition together to get Tehran to stop enriching uranium." But in a world where everyone is looking for an excuse to do business with Iran, not to sanction it, we've lost leverage. Everyone in the neighborhood can smell it -- and it worries them.

Said Gary Samore, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Clinton administration expert on proliferation: "The U.S. NIE, by leading with the statement that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program, has left the misleading impression that the danger has passed."

It has not passed, he noted, because Iran is still enriching uranium in violation of U.N. proliferation rules to which Iran had agreed (and testing long-range delivery missiles). Yes, it is still enriching below weapons grade. Iran says this is to fuel nuclear reactors to generate electricity -- but it has no such reactors. And to get that uranium enriched to weapons grade, all it has to do is keep running it through its centrifuges.

"That is the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon, and Iran is still doing it," said Samore. "Our ability to get strong international sanctions to halt that was already weak," but by declaring definitively that Iran's weapons program had been halted, the NIE "has given the Russians and Chinese a good excuse to make sanctions even weaker."

As I have said before, I'd rather see Iran go nuclear, and contain it, than have the Bush team start another Middle East war over this issue. But I'd much prefer a negotiated end to Iran's enrichment. Right now there is a silly debate: Should we negotiate with Iran "conditionally" or "unconditionally" on this issue. Wrong question. The right question is should we enter such negotiations with or without leverage.

If we sit down with the Iranians without the leverage of a global coalition ready to impose tighter and tighter economic sanctions -- should Iran not halt enrichment -- we'll end up holding a stuffed animal. The peculiar (obtuse?) way the NIE on Iran was framed has deprived all who favor a negotiated settlement of leverage.

"It was the CIA doing its job of collecting intelligence really well and presenting it really badly," said Samore.

Now we have to depend on -- Oh, my God! -- President Bush to persuade the world to read the whole NIE and see it in a balanced perspective. As I've also said before: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them, but good luck getting anyone to buy that anymore.

 

[Formaldehyde Rx]

^
Are you seriously pro-Henry Kissinger?

 

[nhojsmith]

i am pro reason. i already pointed out the key thing is kissingers paper was the footnote in the actual NIE report that he eluded to. catch that?

any one care to address this yet?

the same media that releases this information, you all take it as the gospel, and you still dont reconcile the fact that you are now accepting the findings as facts from the same agencies that you have all been calling liars for the last 6 years. who really has the agenda?