We estimate to over 80% the probability that the week of March 20-26, 2006 will be the beginning of the most significant political crisis the world has known since the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, accompanied by an economic and financial crisis of a scope comparable with that of 1929. This last week of March 2006 will be the turning-point of a number of critical developments, resulting in an acceleration of all the factors leading to a major crisis, disregard any American or Israeli military intervention against Iran. In case such an intervention is conducted, the probability of a major crisis to start rises up to 100%.

The announcement of this crisis results from the analysis of decisions taken by the two key-actors of the main on-going international crisis, that is the United States and Iran:

! on the one hand, there is the Iranian decision to open the first oil bourse priced in Euros

on March 20, 2006 in Teheran, available to all oil producers of the region ;

! on the other hand, there is the decision of the American Federal Reserve to stop publishing M3 figures (the most reliable indicator on the amount of dollars circulating in the world) from March 23, 2006 onward).

These two decisions are altogether the indicators, the causes and the consequences of the historical transition in progress between the order created after World War II and the new international equilibrium in gestation since the collapse of the USSR. Their magnitude as much as their simultaneity will catalyse all the tensions, weaknesses and imbalances accumulated since more than a decade throughout the international system.

We identified 7 converging crises (out of which the first two are detailed in the Telescope section of the present issue) which the American and Iranian decisions coming into effect during the last week of March will catalyse into a total crisis, affecting the whole planet in the political, economic, financial and probably military fields : loss of confidence in the Dollar, explosion of the US financial imbalances, oil crisis, end of the US leadership, distrust towards the Arab-Muslim world, inefficiency of global governance and uncertainties as to the European governance. The decision to cease M3 publication also illustrates the powerlessness of the US and international monetary and financial authorities in a situation where they will in the end prefer to remove the indicator rather than try to act on the reality.

The ‘monetarisation’ of the US debt is a very technical term describing a catastrophically simple reality:  the United States is undertaking not to refund their debt, or more exactly to refund it in “phony money”; and they anticipate that the process will accelerate at the end of March, in coincidence with the launching of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which can only precipitate the sales of US Treasury Bonds by their non-American holders. The choice made by the US administration will result in a complete loss of confidence among their main allies who often are also the greatest holders of US Dollars (United-Kingdom,  The Netherlands,  Japan, …). Diplomatic, strategic and military consequences will be deep and durable…Read more in the GEAB No 2 / 16.02.2006