[wvns] Iran drops US dollar, steals bomb story
Iran stops accepting US dollars for oil
Saturday, 8 December 2007
http://en.rian.ru/world/20071208/91488137.html
TEHRAN, December 8 — Iran has stopped selling its oil for US dollars,
the Iranian ISNA news agency said on Saturday, citing the country's
oil minister.
"In line with a policy of selling crude oil in currencies other than
the US dollar, the sale of our country's oil in US dollars has been
completely eliminated," ISNA reported Oil Minister Gholamhossein
Nozari as saying.
He also said "the dollar is no longer a reliable currency."
Iran is the world's fourth-largest crude oil producer.
At a November summit of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries heads of state, Iran proposed that oil sales be carried for
a variety of currencies, excluding dollars, but was not supported by
any other members except Venezuela.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had previously called the US
currency a "worthless piece of paper."
2007 has seen a significant fall in the value of the U.S dollar
against other major world currencies.
'Iran is dangerous'
Tensions remain high between Iran and the US, which has accused
the Islamic Republic of attempting to build a nuclear weapon, as well
as providing insistence to insurgents in Iraq.
The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), published on Monday,
stated that Tehran had put a stop to weapons production in 2003,
although it was continuing to enrich uranium.
The report contradicted a previous US intelligence assessment in 2005
which said that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear bomb.
US President George W. Bush remained hawkish, despite the report,
saying on Tuesday that, "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and
Iran will be dangerous if they have the know how to make a nuclear
weapon."
When asked if military action remained an option, the president
answered, "The best diplomacy — effective diplomacy — is one in which
all options are on the table."
===
Iran stops selling oil in U.S. dollars -report
Sat Dec 8, 2007
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKDAH83366720071208
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.
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)
===
How They Stole The Bomb From Us
Uri Avnery
08 December 2007
IT WAS like an atom bomb falling on Israel.
The earth shook. Our political and military leaders were all in shock.
The headlines screamed with rage.
What happened?
A real catastrophe: the American intelligence community, comprising 16
different agencies, reached a unanimous verdict: already in 2003, the
Iranians terminated their efforts to produce a nuclear bomb, and they
have not resumed them since. Even if they change their mind in the
future, they will need at least five years to achieve their aim.
SHOULDN'T WE be overjoyed? Shouldn't the masses in Israel be dancing
in the streets, as they did on November 29, 1947, sixty years ago?
After all, we have been saved!
Until this week, we have been regularly hearing that - any minute now
- the Iranians will produce a bomb that threatens our very existence.
Nothing less. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler of the Middle East,
who announces every second day that Israel must disappear from the
map, was about to fulfill his own prophecy.
A small nuclear bomb, even a teeny-weeny one like the ones dropped on
Japan, would be enough to wipe out the whole Zionist enterprise. If it
fell on Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square, the economic, cultural and military
center of Israel would be vaporized, together with hundreds of
thousands of Jews. A second Holocaust.
And lo and behold - no bomb and no any-minute-now. The wicked
Ahmadinejad can threaten us as much as he wants - he just has not got
the means to harm us. Isn't that a reason for celebration?
So why does this feel like a national disaster?
A TWO-BIT psychologist (like me) might say: Jews have become used to
anxiety. After hundreds of years of persecution, expulsions,
inquisition, pogroms and then the Holocaust, we have little red
warning lights in our heads, which come on at the slightest sign of
danger. In such a situation, we feel at home. We know what to do.
But when the lights stay off and no danger appears on the horizon, we
get the feeling that something suspicious is going on. Something is
wrong. Perhaps the lights are out of order. Perhaps it's really a trap!
There is one little consolation in the new situation. While it seems
as if the immediate danger of annihilation has disappeared, there is a
feeling that we are alone, on our own again.
That is another sign of Jewish uniqueness: We are facing the entire
world alone. As in the days of the Holocaust, all the Goyim have
forsaken us. Face to face with the Iranian monster which threatens to
devour us, we now stand here alone.
All our media are repeating this in unison, like an orchestra which
does not need a conductor, because it knows the music by heart.
True, other peoples, too, can derive satisfaction from standing alone.
Engraved in my memory is a British poster that was hanging on our
walls in Palestine in the dark days after the fall of France to the
Nazis, when Britain was left quite alone in the war. Under the grim
face of Winston Churchill the slogan proudly proclaimed: "Alright
then, Alone!"
But with us this has almost become a national ritual. As we used to
sing in the good old days of Golda Meir: "The whole world is against
us / That is an old melody / …And everybody who is against us / Let
him go to hell…" At the time, one of the army entertainment teams
even turned it into a folk dance.
In the last few years, a broad coalition against Iran has come into
being. The Iranian bomb has become the heart of an international
consensus, led by America, Queen of the World. With the consent of all
its five permanent members, the UN Security Council has decreed
sanctions against Tehran.
Now, before our very eyes, this coalition is crumbling. President Bush
is stammering. Gone is the excuse for an American military attack on
Iran, the dream of the Israeli government and the neocons. Gone is
even the pretext for more stringent sanctions. God knows, perhaps even
the existing feeble sanctions will be abolished tomorrow.
THE FIRST reaction of the Israeli leadership was vigorous and
determined: total denial.
The American report is simply wrong, all the media proclaimed. It is
based on false information. Our own intelligence community is in
possession of much better data, which prove that the bomb is well on
its way.
Really? All the intelligence in the hands of the Mossad is
automatically transferred to the CIA. It is part of the mass of data
on which the American report is based. It must be remembered that the
published part of the report constitutes only 3% of the complete document.
So the American intelligence agencies must be deliberately lying.
There is no escaping the conclusion that murky political motives must
lie behind their unequivocal findings. Perhaps they want to make up
for the false reports which President Bush employed to justify his
invasion of Iraq. Then they overestimated, now they underestimate.
Perhaps they want to take revenge on Bush and believe that the time is
ripe, since he has become a lame duck. Or they are adapting themselves
to American public opinion, which cannot stomach another war. And,
besides, their chiefs are, of course, all anti-Semites.
Even if the American intelligence operatives innocently believe that
Iran has stopped work on the Bomb, it just shows how naive they are.
They cannot imagine that the Iranians are fooling them. Who knows
better than us how easy it is to hide an atomic bomb and deceive the
whole world? After all, we have been at it for years.
But all this does not change the fact: this report pushes American
policy in a new direction and changes the entire international
constellation.
The war on Iran, which was to be the defining event of 2008, has
turned for the time being into a non-event.
WHAT ARE the results, as far as Israel is concerned? Why have our
leaders been in a state of shock since the publication of the report?
The possibility of an independent Israeli military strike against Iran
has vanished. Israel cannot wage war without the unreserved backing of
the US. We tried once - the Sinai War of 1956 - and then President
Dwight D. Eisenhower kicked our ass. Since then we have taken great
care to obtain the blessing of the US before every war.
For the military and intelligence services, the report is an
unmitigated disaster for another reason too. The Iranian bomb plays an
indispensable part in the army's annual fight for its massive chunk of
the budget cake.
For right-wing demagogues, the effect is even more disheartening.
Binyamin Netanyahu has built his whole strategy on the Iranian scare,
hoping to ride the Bomb right into the Prime Minister's office.
Furthermore, when the Iranian issue cools down, the Palestinian issue
warms up. That is especially true in Washington DC. President Bush is
in trouble, his fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq are still dragging on.
Any American effort to install a stable government in Iraq, with its
Shiite majority, depends on the backing of Shiite Iran. Bush's dream
of delivering a lightning stroke against Iran and thus leaving his
imprint on history is going up in smoke.
What can he do in order to leave any positive legacy at all? The
default alternative is Israeli-Palestinian peace. Perhaps he will now
give stronger backing to poor Condoleezza. Perhaps he himself will get
more involved. Fact: he is soon going to visit Israel for the first
since entering the White House.
True, this effort has not much chance of success, but people in
Jerusalem are worried nonetheless. That's just what we need - Bush
acting like that anti-Semite, Jimmy Carter, who twisted Begin's arm
and forced him to make peace with Egypt!
So what to do? One can instruct Israeli diplomats abroad to redouble
their efforts to convince the governments that the situation has not
changed, that one must fight against the Iranian bomb, whether it
exists or not. But tell that to the Russians and the Chinese! The
world's governments are happy to see the end of Bush's pressure - all
except that happy couple, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, the new
White House poodles now Tony Blair has gone.
THE NEW situation poses a thorny dilemma for Ehud Olmert.
On the way back from Annapolis, he uttered some amazing statements. If
the "two states solution collapses," he declared, "the State of Israel
is finished". Nobody in the peace camp has yet dared to go as far as that.
Does he believe what he says, or is it just a new spin? That is the
question that is now dominating the discourse in Israel. In other
words: is he just trying to win time, or is he really going to work
for a peace settlement?
All indications suggest that he is in no position to take any step
whatsoever. If he tries to carry out the first phase of the Road Map
and dismantle some settlement outposts, he will face not only the
determined opposition of the settlers and their supporters, and the
silent (but highly effective) opposition of the military, but also
obstruction by his government colleagues. Before the first outpost is
dismantled, his coalition will break apart.
Olmert has no other coalition handy. Ehud Barak has been trying again
and again to outflank him on the right and cannot be relied upon in a
crisis. The Labor Party is a chaotic, spineless and unprincipled body.
The shrunken Meretz party has a faction of only five Knesset members,
four of whom are competing with each other for the party leadership.
The ten members of the Arab factions (that's what they are generally
called, even though one Hadash Knesset member is a Jew) are outcasts,
and no "Zionist" government could be seen to rely openly on their
support. And in Olmert's own faction there are several extreme-right
members who would obstruct any peace effort.
In such a situation, the natural tendency of a real politician like
Olmert is to do nothing, to issue pronouncement left and right (in
both senses) and try to gain time.
This week, the government announced plans to build 300 new homes in
the odious Har Homa settlement, near Jerusalem. For someone like me,
who has spent many days and nights demonstrating against the building
of this particular settlement, that is bitter news indeed. It
certainly does not indicate a turn for the better.
On the other hand, I have heard an interesting thesis from one of
Olmert's inner circle. According to this, knowing that he is going to
lose power, Olmert may tell himself: if I must fall, why not enter
history as somebody who has sacrificed himself on the altar of a lofty
principle, instead of just vanishing as a good-for-nothing political hack?
If he has no other way out, he might choose this solution -
particularly as his immediate family is pushing him in this direction.
I would evaluate this possibility as "unlikely" - but stranger things
have happened.
In any case, perhaps the peace forces should overcome their
understandable reservations and try to influence public opinion in a
way that would help Olmert turn in this direction.
EITHER WAY, one thing is certain: that son of a bitch, Ahmadinejad,
has screwed us again.
He has stolen our most precious possession: the Iranian Atomic Threat.
* An Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli peace
movement, "Gush Shalom".
*********************************************************************
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