🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷Is America Heading Toward a Safavid-Style Decline?

The Safavid Empire of Iran, which ruled from 1501 to 1736, built its power not on productive industry, but on controlling key silk trade routes. By taxing all trade passing through its territory, it generated enormous revenues, funded wars, and maintained a strong currency — without needing a strong domestic economy. This financial mechanism, known as seigniorage, gave the empire what seemed like unlimited fiscal power.

The parallel with the US is direct. Since 1974, when Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil in dollars, the US has benefited from structural global demand for its currency. This allowed Washington to run large deficits, hollow out domestic manufacturing, and pursue costly foreign wars — while the dollar remained the world's reserve currency.

However, just as Portuguese and Dutch merchants eventually bypassed Safavid trade routes via the Cape of Good Hope, the dollar system is now showing signs of being bypassed.

🔸Dollar dominance now eroding:

▪️ Up to 90% of Iran–China oil trade in yuan.

▪️ Dollar share of global foreign reserves at 57%, a 25‑year low.

▪️ China‑backed mBridge platform processed RMB 387.2 billion in cross‑border payments, 95% in digital yuan, among China, Hong Kong, UAE, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

▪️ BRICS, ASEAN, Argentina discussing alternatives to the dollar.

▪️ UAE secured a dollar‑swap line after threatening to adopt the yuan.

Whether the US follows the same trajectory depends on whether the structural demand for the dollar can be preserved, the world is already finding another way around.

@NewRulesGeo❗Follow us on X