TNT:
Tishwash: Najaf markets apologize for dealing in dollars and the National Security punishes those who violate
Najaf – 964 On Sunday, the national security detachments in Najaf imposed advertisements at the entrances to public markets and shops prohibiting the circulation of dollars .in local transactions
A country that trades exclusively in dinars: exhibitions and the wholesale market pledge not to deal in dollars (video)
:the details The campaign was launched this morning, and included shopping centers and malls in the city center, to prevent trading in dollars and limit transactions to Iraqi .dinars only
The security detachments informed us to prevent dealing in dollars, and put signs inside the store emphasizing this decision, as they imposed this on all stores in the .mall A security source in the National Security Agency for Network : 964 The campaign aims to raise the market value of the Iraqi dinar, and we call on citizens to cooperate with us and understand the matter in order to serve the public interest. Those who fail to comply with these decisions will receive punitive .measures in accordance with the law link
CandyKisses: I posted this article yesterday but I could not get the picture of the home to post. I was able to do it today.
Barzani offers his palace in America for sale for less than its price
Baghdad – Iraq Today:
The real estate magazine revealed that the palace belonging to the family of Massoud Barzani in the United States of America was offered for sale, worth $ 27 million, while noting that the property in question had previously been caused a media sensation about it.
The magazine said in a report that “the Bvarian Hills Palace in the US state of California, numbered 613, belonging to the Barzani family in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, was offered for sale for $ 27 million.”
“The aforementioned property, which was purchased in 2019 by a limited investment company for the Barzani family, was recently offered for sale for a lower amount than the previous offer, as the price dropped from $ 30 million in 2022 to $ 27 million this year,” she added.
She explained that “the aforementioned palace, which caused a stir in the American media after revealing that it belonged to Barzani, is indirectly registered in the name of former Kurdistan Regional President Massoud Barzani, and is part of (wealth) he owns inside the United States.”
“The mansion in question is part of other properties, including another mansion located in the same high-priced area known as Beverly Hills,” she said.
The other palace, located at 945 Foot Hill Road, worth a total of $20 million, was purchased by Barzani at the same time as he bought the palace currently for sale.
CandyKisses: The dominance of the US dollar in the Middle East faces dangers. German report explains the reasons
Baghdad – NAS
A German report said that Iraq has banned the use of the dollar in conducting internal trade transactions, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plan to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar.
There are plans to adopt a new currency. What is the reason for the decline in the dominance of the US dollar in the Middle East?
DW reported in its report (May 21, 2023) that the Iraqi government’s decision to ban the use of the US dollar in conducting personal and commercial transactions in the country caused a shock in the car and real estate market. For years, Iraqis have been making expensive purchases using dollars.
The supplement to the report is as follows:
Because of the depreciation of the dinar, Iraqis need to accumulate a large amount of dinars to buy an expensive car or house, for example, so it is customary to use the US dollar to try to avoid this scenario.
For decades, the dollar has been the “king of currencies” and the best to deal with in many countries in the Middle East, but this is changing, with senior officials in a number of countries in the region making statements that the dollar’s dominance in the region may fade.
In Iraq, the US authorities have been making it more difficult to bring dollars into the country because they are concerned about smuggling it to the sanctioned Iranian government, with many Iraqi politicians tacitly supporting Tehran. This shortage of dollars has led to fluctuations in the value of the Iraqi dinar due to its peg to the dollar.
In order to end this crisis, the Iraqi government decided to impose a ban on the use of US dollars in conducting personal and business transactions in the country. In February, Iraq decided to pay for private sector imports from China in yuan.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said his country was “open” to selling oil in currencies other than the dollar, including the euro and yuan. The UAE said it was in early talks with India to trade non-oil goods in Indian rupees. This was preceded by Cairo’s announcement last year of plans to issue bonds in Chinese yuan following the issuance of Japanese yen bonds.
This coincided with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Bahrain expressing interest in joining the BRICS countries that include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moscow said the next meeting of the alliance in June would discuss the creation of a new currency system to complete trade transactions between member states.
Since 2021, the UAE has been participating in a pilot project run by the Bank for International Settlements on the use of digital currencies issued by central banks to complete payments between countries, including away from the dollar, with Thailand, Hong Kong and China among the countries participating in the project.
Is the time of dollar dominance over?
This has fueled speculation about a weakening dollar strength, with the New York Times reporting: “Is the dollar’s dominance threatened?” and the Financial Times saying the world must “prepare for a multipolar world.”
Bloomberg reported last month that “dedollarization is happening at an astonishing pace,” noting that the dollar now accounts for about 58 percent of global currency reserves, while in 2001 it reached 73 percent, while the late seventies of the last century was 85 percent. However, experts stress that the move away from the dollar is moving at a relatively slow pace, contrary to what press reports indicate.
The dollar in the Gulf has not lost its splendor
Gulf oil sales are linked to the dollar dating back to the seventies of the last century, where the countries of the region established a partnership with the United States. This means the United States guarantees the security of the Gulf in exchange for Saudi Arabia and the UAE exporting oil in turn, and most Gulf states have pegged their currencies to the dollar with the exception of Kuwait.
Hassan al-Hassan, a Middle East policy researcher at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, points out that “one of the biggest indicators of a real shift away from the dollar is the depeg of currencies from the dollar, but this has not happened so far.”
Daniel McDowell, a professor of political science at Syracuse University in New York, said Arab officials’ talk of the fading dollar in the Middle East was still “rhetoric.”
“Making statements is easy, but implementing that is the test. For oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, such statements and incitements are only a way to attract U.S. attention. “Flirting with China may make politicians in the White House pay more attention to the interests of the Gulf states.”
But McDowell does not rule out the possibility that the dollar’s dominance will fade in the coming days, adding: “All empires eventually collapse, but at the moment such talk is symbolic and political, and any change we see is still marginal and slow.”
War in Ukraine
Experts agreed that the desire to search for currencies other than the dollar in the Middle East is due to Spin: the first is the Ukraine war. McDowell said sanctions have occupied a large part of the discussions, adding, “The more the United States uses the dollar as a foreign weapon, the more its adversaries move toward doing economic activities in other currencies.”
“A lot of Russian money is currently passing through countries in the Middle East and Asia, while these countries are seen as countries that have chosen not to comply with US and European sanctions against Russia or refused to implement them,” al-Hassan said.
However, if sanctions on Russia are tightened, including the option of “secondary sanctions”, these countries will face greater difficulties in avoiding them, as secondary sanctions will be imposed on third parties, whether states or companies, making it more difficult to circumvent Western sanctions on Moscow.
“Governments concerned about U.S. sanctions are increasingly thinking about how to move forward even if they have not yet shown any willingness to make a radical shift away from the dollar,” McDowell said.
The threat of the oil sector!
Hassan revealed the second reason why countries in the region want to move away from the dollar, saying, “I think there is a sense that the United States may be trying to rewrite the rules of the global oil market to target Russian interests, which represents a strategic threat to Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman said in March that “capping oil prices will inevitably lead to market instability. “We will not sell oil to any country that caps prices on our supplies.”
Earlier, Algerian Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab expressed his country’s opposition to any decision that would lead to a ceiling on natural gas prices, adding that “Algeria does not support the idea of price caps under any circumstances.”
Maria Demtritzis, a professor of economic policy at the European University Institute in Florence, said that with sanctions on Russia still ongoing, talk of moving away from the dollar would grow, but acknowledged it would not happen overnight.
“Even if some countries wanted to resort to a currency other than the dollar, they would not be able to replace the settlement infrastructure provided by the dollar-denominated system.”
The “weapon” of banks!
“If India wants to complete a deal with Chile, it will do so with dollars, but not only because any product can be priced in dollars, but also because of the use of US dollar infrastructure to settle the deal, which is the legal procedure to transfer money from one account to another,” she said.
“This has been provided by the United States for decades, which means that any alternative to the dollar would have huge legal and administrative implications: for example, Chile does not recognize the legal framework of the Indian rupee, which means that reaching a stabilizing phase for the central banks of both countries is still a long way off.”
Demirtzis pointed to the fact that the fact that the United States and Europe froze the reserve assets of the Russian Central Bank under their jurisdictions has led to the use of central banks as a weapon, which has harmed the international financial system.
The fact that the United States and the European Union “are arming international trade and finance in the context of the war with Russia is why Middle Eastern countries are preparing for a multipolar world order, as these countries want to be better positioned both inside and outside the regions where the dollar is transacted”, al-Hassan said.
