The falling price of oil worldwide has nothing to do with market forces, Iran's head of state Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday. It's part of an international plot by Western countries to denude the Islamic world of its greatest asset.
“The oil price drop is a plot against the regional people and Muslims which merely benefits some other countries,” said Rouhani. The Muslim peoples will not forget the “stab in the back” rendered by Westerners, and will act in accordance.
Oil has dropped in price over the past several months, and now is trading at around $60 a barrel, prices not seen in nearly a decade. Economists say that the low prices are due to a glut of oil on the world market. OPEC countries in a meeting last week could not come to a decision on cutting production, and the United States recently became the world's second largest producer of oil.
Rouhani was having none of it. “The fall in crude price is not merely an economic issue. Rather, it is caused by a plot and political planning by certain countries,” he said.
He said that Iran had foreseen, and was prepared for, such a scenario – but that the cheap oil would, in the end, cost the Western countries, because “people will always remember such moves, and those behind the plot will be most hated in the Muslim world.”