Nancy B King

The balance of world power has just shifted! As of this morning, Iran halted the sale of oil to France and Great Britain. Earlier this week they stopped shipping to some of the smaller European countries. Iran has beat us at our own game.

So much for the effectiveness of our Iranian oil sanctions which don’t go into effect until July. The delay was to give European countries time to find an alternative source of oil. Does Saudi Arabia actually have the excess oil reserves that most people seem to think it has?

Now, the European countries will have to rely even more heavily on Russia’s oil and pipelines that run through the continent. Russia will be laughing all the way to the bank as it pushes oil down its pipelines to Europe. At some point in time, some European country will do something Russia doesn’t like, and Russia will simply tighten down the oil spigot. It has already done that to a couple eastern European countries. As a matter of fact, since Latvia soundly voted against Russian as an official second language; what is their level of dependence on Russian oil?

For the past month or so Iran has been putting in place “off the books” oil trade agreements with Russia, China, India, and Japan—agreements to sell oil to those countries in non-US dollars that bypass the European and U. S. banks. It is all in place now, and the world has just changed. Iran, Russia, and China against who—the U.S. France, Germany, and Israel. I suspect today is a historic day.