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India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively. Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets. By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan....

(BRUSSELS) - The EU agreed an embargo on Iran's oil exports Monday as well as financial sanctions as the West ramped up pressure on Tehran's suspect nuclear drive to press it to return to the negotiating table. "This is an important decision. It will be a major strengthening of the sanctions applied on Iran," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "It is absolutely right to do this in view of Iran's continued breach of UN Security Council resolutions and refusal to come to meaningful negotiations on the nuclear programme," he added. After weeks of tough talks on the timing and...

Exclusive: EU agrees to embargo on Iranian crude Photo 1:30pm EST By Justyna Pawlak and Parisa Hafezi BRUSSELS/TEHRAN (Reuters) - European governments have agreed in principle to ban imports of Iranian oil, EU diplomats said Wednesday, dealing a blow to Tehran that crowns new Western sanctions months before an Iranian election. The prospective embargo by the European Union, along with tough U.S. financial measures signed into law by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve, form a concerted Western campaign to hold back Iran's nuclear program. Iran says the program is strictly non-military, but Western countries say a November U.N....