In the last weeks of 2006, just before Washington's new escalation of the propaganda offensive against Iran, the Tehran government announced it is shifting its foreign currency reserves from the dollar to euro—and switching to the euro for oil deals—in response to US-led pressure on its economy. In the long-expected [1] move, Tehran said it would use the euro for all future commercial transactions overseas. Tehran had been steadily shifting its foreign-held assets out of dollars since 2003. "There will be no reliance on dollars," said Tehran spokesman Gholam-Hussein Elham. "This change is already being made in the currency reserves abroad." (BBC [2], Dec. 18)
Note that occupied Iraq is moving in exactly the opposite direction [3]—in vivid contrast to the situation there before the occupation [4].
See our last post on Iran [5], and the global struggle for control of oil [6].
