Iran completely out of U.S. Dollar based oil sales.

Iran had totally removed U.S. dollars in the country's oil transactions, an Oil Ministry official said on Wednesday. "The dollar has completely been removed from our oil trade....Crude oil customers have agreed with us to use other currencies (in the trade)," Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard was quoted as saying by the state television.

"We make our transactions with euros in Europe, but yen in Asia," he added.

Due to the tensions with Washington in the past years over the nuclear disputes and the latest depreciation of dollars, Iran has vowed to decrease the greenback in its foreign trade. Iran central bank also has reduced dollars in the country's foreign reserves. In last November's summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Saudi Arabia, Iran proposed that it was necessary to replace the U.S. dollar with other major hard currencies in oil trading.

But some Arab allies of the United States showed few support to Tehran's advice. However, Iran's Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari has already declared in last December that Tehran had completely stopped selling its oil in dollars, according a report by the semi-official ISNA news agency at that time.

"In line with the policy of selling crude oil in non dollar currencies, currently selling our country's oil in U.S. dollars has been completely stopped," Nozari was then quoted as saying. Right now it's not clear why there seems to be a contradiction between comments by the two officials over the exact time to stop dollars in Iran's oil trade.

Iran dumps U.S. dollars in oil transactions - Persian Journal economy business Latest Archaeology oil gas news & Iranian business newspaper gas

-for those not in the know, saddam hussien stopped using the the U.S. petrodollar, the world's reserve currency months before the iraq invasion.

it is interesting to see the defense sector index move up 8 percent of the last two weeks.
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as you can see from the one year chart, this is a big move



we also have war alerts on msm

(CBS) April 29, 2008
A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops. (source)
video:



"Concerned over Iran's disputed nuclear weapons program, the Pentagon has ordered military commanders to develop to options for attacking Iran. David Martin"