nice post…

Because Iran is selling more of its oil for payment in euros than dollars (good for Europe) as it seeks to shift its foreign currency reserves away from the depreciating currency of its political enemy, the United States.

“The government has ordered the central bank to replace the dollar with the euro to limit the problems of the executive organs in commercial transactions,” government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.

“We will also employ this change for Iranian assets in dollars held abroad.”

Iran’s decision to switch currencies extends a trend among big oil exporters moving from the dollar as they seek protection from a continuing slide in the petrocurrency’s value. In October Russia said it would diversify its currency reserves into Japanese yen. Overall, Russia is believed to have let its dollar holdings slip and they are now equal with euros.

The United Arab Emirates has been switching its currency reserves from dollars to euros as well as the Saudi’s

The fall in the dollar against major currencies has had a dramatic impact on the revenues of oil exporters and has exacerbated the rumbling anti- American feeling in the Gulf.

Although Gulf Arab states are predominantly dollar export earners, they mainly purchase in euros and yen, buying food, consumer goods and manufactured products from Europe and the Far East.

Speaking of the Far East Lets talk about the largest importer of Iranian oil and who cannot go with out it.

China told the U.S. delegation they no longer have faith in U.S. Currency for several reasons:

1) The Federal Reserve Bank ceased publishing “M3″ data in March, making it nearly impossible for anyone to know how much cash is being printed. China said this act made it impossible to tell how much a Dollar is worth.

2) The U.S. Dollar has lost its value against other foreign currencies meaning China has lost Billions simply by holding U.S. Dollars in its reserves.

3) The U.S. has no plans whatsoever to reduce deficit spending or ability pay down any of its existing debt without printing money to pay it off.

For these reasons China has decided to implement a careful (so not to cause panic) sell-off of U.S. Dollars before the rest of the world does so.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lead the delegation, along with five other cabinet-level officials, including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. Also in the delegation is Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.

The Bush administration wanted to get China’s cooperation in preventing a dollar collapse.

China is being careful in its sell-off because a panic would
cause a worldwide sell-off of dollars, create almost immediate “hyper-inflation” in the US and also impact world markets at a level “worse than the Great Depression of 1929.”

Also China cannot simply trade their Dollars for other paper currencies, they have been spending their U.S. Cash on commodities such as gold, silver and Rhodoium as well as military hardware; ships and planes, placing large orders and paying for those orders with the one point one trillion in cash dollars they possess.

Further, if the U.S. attempted to intervene with military action, the only plant in the world which can manufacture the specialized gyros needed for U.S. Cruise Missile guidance systems, is now located in. . . . .China.

China could prevent that plant from shipping to the U.S., and once our arsenal of cruise missiles was depleted, it would take a long time to re-tool a plant to make more gyros and resupply cruise missiles for battle. The Chinese feel they could accomplish certain military goals before the U.S. could re-tool.

Pentagon source went so far as to say “Even if China was to lose the entire one trillion in cash to a collapse of the Dollar as a currency, they will have succeeded in taking the U.S. off the world stage as any type of effective military or economic power — without firing a shot!” A ‘classic’ Sun Tzu paradigm of victory – the art of fighting, without fighting.

The crippling of the US is a highly desirable military benefit for China at a relatively cheap price since it will leave their human capital and infrastructure assets in place; assets they know they would lose if a hot war erupted with the US.

So what more does the military say
continued

You mean the Saudi’s will be somewhat co-operative with Iran!
In an unusual collaboration that could complicate American policy in the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been mediating an agreement to end Lebanon’s violent political crisis.

Both see a common interest in calming sectarian tensions, at least for now. The fight has effectively divided the country between the predominantly Shiite Muslim opposition and the predominantly Sunni Muslim governing alliance.

Leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed party trying to overthrow the Lebanese government, have recently visited the Saudi king in Riyadh, according to officials who attended the meeting. And Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi chief security adviser, has met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, in Riyadh and Tehran to try to stop Lebanon’s slide into civil war.

“The only hope is for the Iranians and Saudis to go further in easing the situation and bringing people back to the negotiating table,” said Radwan al- Sayyed, an adviser to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

“It is true, whoever governs will decide Lebanon’s political direction,” said Muhammad Fneish, a senior Hezbollah member who said he recently attended a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia and Iran are near an agreement,” said Toufic Sultan, a former leader in the main government-aligned Druse party who has maintained close ties to Saudi officials.

“The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East,” said Khaled al-Dakhil, a Saudi writer and academic. “There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It’s more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region.”

“It was necessary to create an enemy to justify the failure of the American occupation in Iraq,” Talal Salman, the editor-in-chief of as-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, wrote in a column this month. “So to protect ourselves against the coming of the wolf, we bring the foreign fleets that fill our lands, skies and seas.”

Iran has found itself strengthened almost by default, first with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to Iran’s east, which ousted the Taliban rulers against whom it almost went to war in the 1990s, and then to its west, with the American ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, against whom it fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.

“I disagree with Iranian policy, but you have to give the Iranians credit,” said Abdullah al-Shayji, a political science professor and head of Kuwait University’s American Studies Unit. “You have to appreciate that they have an agenda, they’re planning for it, they seize the opportunity, they see an American weakness and they are capitalizing on it.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Kuwait rarely rebuffs its ally, the United States, partly out of gratitude for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But in October it reneged on a pledge to send three military observers to an American-led naval exercise in the Gulf, according to U.S. officials and Kuwaiti analysts.

“We understood,” a State Department official said. “The Kuwaitis were being careful not to antagonize the Iranians.”

European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, officials on both sides say. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran.

Europeans are resisting American appeals for quick action, citing technical and political problems related to the heavy European economic ties to Iran and its oil industry.

A European official said: “We are going to be very cautious about what the Treasury Department wants us to do. We can see that banks are slowing their business with Iran. But because there are huge European business interests involved, we have to be very careful.”

continued

I think until Iran is reduced the Saudis will be somewhat co-operative.

No I did not say that. I said how can a government that’s been intent upon using the terrorist attacks to carry out the invasion of Iraq, prevent bringing to justice those who’ve been established as being directly responsible for it?

Meaning that we have been using the 9/11 attacks as our main reason for invading Iraq but clearly there are far more conections linking the Saudi’s to 9/11 and terrorism than Iraq.

So why are we doing nothing to combat the real terrorist the “SAUDI’S”! Who warned Cheney months ago that they were going to supply the Sunnis with advanced weaponry and cash (to buy more) if we sided with the Shiites. There has been evidence that they had been funding them from the beginning and it has only been increasing. The only difference this makes is it is now out in the open.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has warned Vice President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back the Sunnis if the United States pulls out of Iraq, according to a senior American official.

The official said the king “read the riot act” to the vice president when the two met last month in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The New York Times first reported the conversation Wednesday, saying Saudi support would include financial backing for minority Sunnis in the event of a civil war between them and Iraq’s Shiite majority.

Asked about the meeting, a senior Saudi official — who spoke on condition he not be named — ruled out using terminology such as “warning” or “threatening.” He said, “I believe the Saudi position was clear, that things might deteriorate or drift in Iraq, and then the kingdom will find itself forced to interfere.”

Also

Saudi Arabia believes the Iraqi government is not up to the challenge and has told the United States that it is prepared to move its own forces into Iraq should the violence there degenerate into chaos, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Tuesday.

…

The Saudis’ primary concern is the Sunni population of Anbar province, the senior U.S. official. The official said the Saudis had informed Washington that they were considering a plan to send troops into the province if Bush’s plan failed.

The Saudi’s are mad as hell at “US” turning the government over to people who are known to be Iranian agents like Ahmad Chalabi, Al-Jafari, Al-Hakim and Al-Maliki!

This has caused many Sunni Saudis concern and outrage over the single handed give away in Sunni Iraq to Shia Iranian interests while demonizing and sabre rattling against Tehran.

So we have Saudis financing the Sunni Insurgency in Baghdad while we call Iran the axis of evil, then delivering Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon to her on a silver plate a la Hezbollah. Al-Maliki, like Ibrahim Al-Jafari before him, came from Iran. And at the same time we have to deal with Sunni ally Pakistan harboring the Taliban and Sunni ally Saudi Arabia sympathetic to Sunni insurgents in Iraq openly funding the insurgency were now going to take on Iran all because of 9/11 that was done by and funded by Saudi’s.

In his 2003 Naval Post graduate thesis titled “Is Saudi Arabia a Nuclear Threat?”Steven R. McDowell writes:

Now that the CSS-2 missiles are nearing the end of their lifecycle, the Saudi regime may choose to replace them. During a March 11, 1997 interview with Defense News, Saudi military chief of staff, Lt Gen. Saleh Mohaya stated [referring to the Saudi’s CSS-2 ballistic missile inventory], “The [Saudi Arabian] oil kingdom is now considering replacing or refurbishing the desert missile force.”

Early in 2006, the German periodical Cicero reported that satellite imagery obtained by Germany’s secret service indicated that Saudi Arabia has set up in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a new secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles. TPMcafe has also picked up on this item

According to some Western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.

The Ghauri missile has a range of 1,500 kilometers, while the CSS-2.
missile has a longer 2500km range.

The East Wind’s modified range/payload (5) of 2,500 km/2,000 kg (conventional load) brings many countries within striking range, including Israel, the former Soviet Union, and Iran, though the missiles are said to be targeted on Tehran and other Iranian population centers, rather than Israel.

It seems that Saudi Arabia has replaced its aging Chinese missiles with North Korean/Pakistani “Ghauri” missiles, albeit with 1000km less range, they have essentially modernized their missile fleet.

Would Saudi Arabia allow Iran to accuire nuclear weapons first? Certainly not in the current enviroment of a regional Middle East proxy war.

Come on people! There is the recent Russian Mach 3 cruise missile and we do not have a Mach 3 jet interceptor in the inventory! Short of a Russian Mig-29, no one else in the Persian Gulf does either! Besides the x-555 we have to deal with the Sunburn and we cant counter it.

Oh and what about the Straights of Hormuz?

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Before the military or the American press said anything Quds Press, in a dispatch posted Saturday evening, reported that Jaysh al-Mujahideen fighters opened fire with machine guns in the at-Tamayimah gardens area of Buhriz, scoring direct hits and bringing down the American helicopter. A Jaysh al-Mujahideen source told Quds Press that 15 Americans were aboard the helicopter, not “13″ as the US admitted, and that one of those was a high-ranking American officer.

An Interior Ministry official and the police in Diyala Province said Saturday that the American helicopter was shot down about 4 p.m. by insurgents who had fired missiles or grenades from at least two locations.

And in fact, it turns out that the ‘top medical officer in Iraq’ was one of those killed, as announced 4 days later. The Quds source, who accurately reported that at least one high ranking officer was aboard, become insistent that there were 15 on board? It seems rather specific, and not enough of an increase to be propaganda-worthy.

How was the Interior Ministry official so accurate before “US”?
Did he have inside information? The same information that was used in the Karbala attack? Remember the Iraqi official’s license plate used to help get inside for the Karbala attack was Abdul Falah al-Sudani Iraq’s minister of trade.

Did the Interior Ministry official have reason to belive or expect 15 to be on board? And if expected, is that what and how they the attackers knew and was the top ranking officer killed the one they had in mind?

All of the initial reports said thirteen were killed. This was later changed to twelve. Who ever it was must have “got better”.

All deaths of enlisted personnel must be reported, as well as deaths of company and field grade officers. So everything up to full bird colonel will become known.

The death of a general, however, can arguably become a matter of national security. You generally don’t want to advertise that a command grade officer was taken out by an insurgency while you are engaged in counter insurgency operations.

So some enterprising reporter out there who wants to potentially break earth shatering news should follow up on the status of the generals in theater. There can’t be a lot of them, and it is possible one is currently missing.

Oh yea the news isnt touching this for the most part so I doubt that will happen.

It is important to note that the heightend security was also because Gates was there! He was meeting with high rankers including The top American medical officer in Iraq Colonel Brian D. Allgood.

The helicopter was targetted by different groups with missiles. I seem to think that this means it wasn’t so much a “look, a US helicopter! let’s shoot it down!” as it was a “we were told they would be flying over, so let’s set up our missiles here and here”.