Kazakh Businessmen Ready to Bypass Western Sanctions against Iran

Kazakh businessmen and trade activists underlined their preparedness to join the anti-sanctions campaign and bypass the US-led western embargos against Iran.
“The Caspian Sea littoral states can use other currencies than dollar for solving their trade problems,” Head of Kazakhstan’s Aktau Chamber of Commerce Elenov Kuanisherk said in a meeting with Iranian businessmen in the Northern city of Sari, Mazandaran, on Tuesday morning.

Stressing that such an alliance has earlier been created among the African states, Kuanisherk said, “Kazakhstan’s Chamber of Commerce is ready to accept the anti-sanctions movement and also hold a meeting with the Caspian Sea littoral states in this regard.”

In relevant remarks in January, former Iranian Economy Minister Seyed Shamseddin Hosseini said Tehran plans to exclude the currencies of the western states, specially dollar and euro, from its foreign trade.

“According to the decision made by the cabinet workgroup, dollar and euro will be gradually put aside from Iran’s trade with other countries,” Hosseini said at the time.

The former minister noted that Iran has changed its trade partners and redirecting its trade transactions from such countries as the UK and Germany to countries like China and Turkey.

Such changes reduce the need to third currencies like dollar and euro, he added.

Also in July 2010, Iran’s former First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi stressed that the “country plans to replace Dollar and Euro with other currencies in its oil trades”.

“We are free to choose any currency to sell our crude oil and this issue depends on Iran’s interests,” Rahimi said in a ceremony releasing a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“The important issue is to exclude euros and dollars,” he added.

In 2009, Venezuela’s late president said that countries including Venezuela, Russia and Iran had proposed that the US dollar should be replaced as the currency used for oil trade.

“We’ve been talking about this in OPEC. Venezuela agrees and there are other countries, such as Iran and Russia, that also agree with this idea,” Hugo Chavez told reporters in the central Bolivian region of Cochabamba.

Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization in 2009 announced a project to completely exclude the US dollar from the country’s foreign revenues and reserves.

The constant declining value of the dollar and euro and persisting economic crisis in the US and EU has forced many countries to drop the currencies in favor those more stable.