Iran’s Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said in an interview with Kommersant daily: “I believe it’s high time we created a club of countries hit by sanctions. Among its members will be many strong powers with developed economies: Russia, China and Iran.” Ambassador Jalali said that Washington “wants Russia to be weak, China to be economically subordinated to them and Iran to become their colony. That’s why we need to cooperate, help each other and complement each other… If we make joint efforts we will overcome U.S. pressure,” the ambassador emphasized.
There are other indications that a number of countries whose economies are being ravaged by the London dollar-centered financial system and its punitive sanctions, are banding together and considering other options. For example, a July 20 Global Times article by Wang Wen, the executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, headlined “China Confident ‘De-Dollarization’ Is Fast underway amid Tense Times,” reports on various indications of de-dollarization: “sharply reducing U.S. debt holdings, dropping U.S. dollar’s status as an anchor currency, increasing non-dollar bulk commodity trade, growing the reserve of non-dollar currencies, and ramping up gold’s hedge against the dollar.” Wang also takes up the critical matter of the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), “which reported that in May, the share of U.S. dollars in the international payment market was 40.88%, a drop from 44.1% in March…. The SWIFT system, which has been traditionally used for trade clearance and payments, and which is overwhelmingly controlled by the U.S., has been widely criticized across the world. Many countries are striving to construct de-dollarizing payment systems. For example, China launched the Cross-border Interbank Payment System in 2015. It is very likely that the share of U.S. dollars in international payment systems will drop to below 40%.”
