Iran has stopped trading in US dollars for oil, according to a top Iranian oil ministry official.

The official, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, told Iranian state-run television today that “the dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” and that the country has “agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

The dollar’s spending power, like it or not, is at the mercy of Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Addison Wiggan in the 5-Minute Forecast.

“At a November 2007 meeting of the OPEC’s 13-member cartel, , whose country already receives payment for 85% of its oil exports in nondollar currencies, urged other countries to follow suit and ‘designate a single hard currency aside from the U.S. dollar…to form the basis of our oil trade. ‘The empire of the dollar has to end,’ chimed in Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; his state oil company changed its dollar investments to euros at his order — er, request.

“Rumors are circulating that the Bank of Korea, after selling off $ 100 million worth of U.S. bonds in August 2007, is getting ready to sell $1 billion more, and if Washington forces trade sanctions, China, which threatened recently to cash in $900 billion of U.S. bonds, will probably follow suit.

“In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s dream of a stock market to trade the country’s natural resources in rubles is not so far-fetched; in 2005, Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of oil, followed South Korea’s lead and ended the dollar peg. And once again, Sudan is hinting that it will impose trade or financial sanctions against companies that do business with the United States — only this time, the words just might have teeth. As other countries follow suit, the dollar — and your spending power — drops. What does this mean? You will need more dollars to buy things than it takes today.”