What it's about is Iran's threat to dump oil on the market and selling it in Euros per barrel instead of Dollars per barrel. There was a video of a speech to Congress by Representative Ron Paul about this floating around the net last week. Every time somone threatens to do this, we go to war with them or a coup/assasination attempt is made on them. He talks about that too. Basically, we no longer have a gold standard, and the only way to protect the value of the dollar "as if it were as GOOD AS GOLD" was to make a deal with the oil producing countries in the middle east: We'll protect your empires, you sell your oil in Dollars per Barrel.
The vid is a lot more involved than that simplification, I recommend watching it. Highly enlightening, about a 15 min. long.