Iran currently receives non-dollar currencies for 85% of its oil exports with euros composing 65% and yen 20%. Iran is currently planning on moving the remaining 15% of dollar denominated oil exports to other currencies such as the United Arab Emirates dirham.
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, Dick Nixon made a deal with the House of Saud (feudal overlords of the only kingdom named after its ruling family, and one of the most oppressively authoritarian states in the Middle East), opening the biggest line of credit in the history of… well history itself.
From that point on, if anyone wanted to buy oil, they first needed to buy dollars to do so. And those, you can only get in one place. And hey, if you happen to be able to print them on demand, well, you got yourself a nice little subsidy welfare system going there!
Thing is, borrowing is almost always a trap; it’s better to do an honest day’s work for your cash. Else you tend to end up borrowing from others to pay off the debts you already owe. Or indeed robbing Peter to pay Paul. Not to mention invading every country on the feckin’ planet that threatens your reckless borrowing by not playing by your rules. The behaviour of a cornered addict.
Shakespeare said it well, via Polonius (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3):
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Perhaps it’s time for a new greatest generation to throw off the shadow of Nixon, and all those ‘leaders’ after him who have perpetuated his crimes.