Why wouldn't Iran accept Yuan? Without doing anything special, China is becoming the most reliable trade partner in the world.
This tactic, used against Russia, Iran, and others, has turned them to seeking other, safer currencies. The Euro is risky; EU members are American allies, generally speaking, and also may act against Iran, etc. for their own reasons. The most widely used currency and most stable economy (an unstable economy causes and unstable currency) is the Chinese yuan or renminbi.
If you sell something for $10 billion US dollars then you can use that money to buy almost anything in the world. If you sell it for equivalent yuan, your options are much more limited. For some things you might need, it could be similar to showing up to a shopping mall in Chicago with yuan - you effectively have no money (without finding a way to convert them to dollars, which brings you back to the original problem).
Also, while China is a major economic power, they are not considered as stable as the US government (though the gap is closing quickly). Your $10 billion in yuan today might be worth $9 billion tomorrow.
Just by doing this, Kenya saved 215 millions USD... on a Chinese USD loan. [2]
1: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/chinas-12-trillion-trad...
2 : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-07/kenya-sna...
this is going to become a worldwide economic disaster:
iran learnt it can 1. bully nearby gulf-nations 2. block hormuz
without much retaliation, and US can't do much due to internal politics (well a lot of people don't like Trump...)
so what cards do each nations have left?
can US "talk" with / use threats against iran and "make it a good guy"?
just talking threats can't force current regime to 'become good' -- bombing's not scary anymore
even economic gifts won't work: economically, iran is not vietnam: it has huge oil reserves, and it can hold hormuz hostage -- so time and effort can't make current regime 'a friend of US'
so... diplomatic chance is LONG GONE...
even if biden or obama becomes the president, they can't solve this: the 'benefit of doubt' is gone
so... unfortunately... the only card left for US and its allies... is ground troops... or some alternative to hormuz...
A bad deal will just give a short break before Israel and US strike a third time.
well unfortunately its survival would mean tighter control of iranian populace: it now has an excuse to do so ("are you an american spy? why do you disobey higher command?")
iran will become more like north korea more than before...
as for the iranian people? well those guys could have been driving porsche like qataris people...
Iran is the way it is because the West has been ruthlessly exploiting their resources, undermining their government, and attacking them militarily for the last 100 years.
but at least I expected US to be more prepared than this
Problem is Iran leadership especially would need to retarded to trust any good guy promisses from USA.
I mean, USA breaks promisses to literally anyone, but it specifically bombed Iran already twice during negotiations. And its history involves usa turning hostile each time relationships seems to get better.
How can you play good guy with history like that? And with present of attacking literal own allies?
I don't know why you're throwing this out casually, like the difficulty is merely due to political dissent? People "don't like" Trump precisely because all of his policies are exactly like this idiotic attack on Iran - poorly thought out, and inevitably end up doing the exact opposite as what he claims they will do. Trump's whole modus operandi has always been aggressive escalation against other parties, then making negative-sum "deals" to extract wealth. This half-works in business but absolutely fails in international relations (why all of our traditional allies are sitting this one out, at best).
You keep attributing these actions to the "US", but the truth of the matter is that the competent people at the top who was coming up with options like "here is a plan but it requires hundreds of thousands of US troops for years" would have been sidelined and replaced with a Party loyalist sycophant who said it would be easy. For further reading, see this HN thread on the Military Failures of Fascism https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47523207
Of course whether people like/trust the current president or not matters on the range of military power he can project on foreign land
dang if it was obama, it could have been 500,000 and almost no one would even fuss
I certainly would.
But the fact that the US doom industry has been beating the drum at Iran for years, while the US military intelligence community has still held back on actually attacking speaks volumes about what a poor idea this was.
OTOH the US is the largest oil producer in the world [1]. Theoretically the US could keep domestic prices in check, but that would require rather drastic administrative pressure, likely only legal at wartime.
They also want Iran participating in globalism.
The US is etching closer and closer at weakening it's neighbours, once they have been defeated China will be the next Iran.