In yet another sign that Turkey’s Eurasian pivot is about cold hard economics, rather than more fleeting ideological concerns, Turkey and Iran have officially announced that future bilateral trade will be conducted in Iranian Rial and Turkish Lira. This represents yet another blow to Dollar hegemony, as countries ranging from Russia, China and Venezuela, begin exploring trading options that are not dependant on the United States.

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According to Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, this gives the two countries the potential to treble the current level of bilateral trade which stands at $10 billion per annum, up to $30 billion.

A global effort among countries whose economies aren’t directly tied in to the US financial and monetary systems, to drop the Dollar and begin trading in local and regional currencies, has long been a priority among states that are effectively getting ripped off by Dollar derived exchange rates and practices.

September’s BRICS summit in Xiamen China placed a heavy emphasis on the need for BRICS nations and their partners beyond, to begin developing and implementing different means of exchange than the US Dollar.

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The fact that the US has levelled sanctions against economies ranging from Russia to Iran and Venezuela to North Korea, while threatening to do the same to China, has only made the need to find alternatives to the Dollar as the standard trading and reserve currency, all the more pressing.