A conspiracy theory that is not too far fetched.
Neo Conservatives have been using carrot and stick to convince OPEC
members to stick to the Petrodollar regime.
The carrot; The Iraq war. The US taxpaxers has been funding the US
military to mop up oil supply in the international market for
strategic reserve to boost crude price, this provides a incentive
for OPEC (especially the Saud family of Arabia) to continue to
trade oil in USD. It's also serves to slowdown China's economic
growth, due to higher cost for importing crude.
However, due to the impending US presidential election 2005, the
Bush administration did not raise taxes to finance the Iraq war.
Instead, the Bush administration cut on social sercurity,
healthcare and education budgets to finance the war in Iraq. Even
that was insufficient to upkeep the cost on the war on
terrorism.
As a stop gap measure, the US treasury started to issue more bonds
to increase the money supply to finance the war. This resulted in
the decline of the value of the USD. To arrest the decline of the
USD, the Federal reserve started increasing interest rates for USD,
in an attempt to salvage the situation.
The stick; Regime Change by military force. Any oil producing
country's government that attempts to breakaway from the
petrodollar regime will be toppled. Iraq was allowed to sell oil
under the UN oil for food program in the year 2000. Saddam demanded
that all his oil should be paid in Euros. This was a calculated
move on Saddam's part to upset the petrodollar regime which was to
trigger the invasion of Iraq as a friendly reminder to other OPEC
states, especially Saudi Arabia not to take that course of
action.
Iran has started an oil bourse that trades oil in Euros in 2006.
International news coverage of the "rogue" nuclear in Iran is
designed by the Neo Cons as a pretext for embargo of Iranian oil or
military regime change of the Iranian government at some point of
time should the need arises.
Americans by voting the Democrats to control both houses of the
Congress has upset the Grand Strategy of the Neo Cons.