Isfahan, Iran - The market is full of oil and the rising price trend is "fake
and imposed," Iran's president said on Tuesday, partly blaming a weak U.S.
dollar which he said was being pushed lower on purpose.
    "At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of
production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is
completely fake and imposed," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised
speech.
    "It is very clear that visible and invisible hands are controlling prices
in a fake way with political and economic aims," he said when opening a
meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development in the central Iranian
city of Isfahan.
    Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, has repeatedly said the market
is well-supplied with crude and blames rising prices on speculation, a weak
U.S. currency and geopolitical factors.
    "As you know the decrease in the dollar's value and the increase in energy
prices are two sides of the same coin which are being introduced as factors
behind the recent instability," Ahmadinejad said.
    Oil steadied on Tuesday after touching a record near $140 the previous day,
with traders caught between a weaker dollar and expectations that top exporter
Saudi Arabia will ramp up output to its highest rate in decades.
    Iran has often said it sees no need for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) to boost output.
    "Ever-Increasing Decrease"
    Ahmadinejad reiterated his view that oil should be sold in a basket of currencies
rather than U.S. dollars, an idea which has failed to win over other OPEC members,
except Venezuela.
    "The ever-increasing decrease in the dollar's value is one of the world's
major problems," he said.
    "A combination of the world's valid currencies should become a basis for
oil transactions or (OPEC) member countries should determine a new currency
for oil transactions," he said.
    Iran, embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, has for
more than two years been increasing its sales of oil for currencies other than
the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.
    Ahmadinejad, who in the past has called the dollar a "worthless piece
of paper," suggested "some big powers" were driving it lower
on purpose:
    "The planners for some big powers are acting to decrease the dollar's
value," he said. "For years they imposed inflation and their own economic
problems to other nations by injecting the dollar without any support to the
global economy."
    Foes since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at
odds over Tehran's disputed nuclear activities as well as over policy in Iraq.
Iran says its atomic work is peaceful.
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    (Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran; Writing by Fredrik Dahl;
Editing by William Hardy)