Iran parliament speaker: Trump’s ‘fake news’ about talks designed to manipulate markets

Iran Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf denies that any negotiations have taken place with the US after Israeli media claimed that he was the official that US President Donald Trump’s envoys have been talking to in recent days.

“Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors,” Ghalibaf says.

“All officials stand firmly behind their leader and people until this goal is achieved,” he adds, ostensibly referring to Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

“No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” he says.

Trump told reporters earlier that the US was negotiating with “the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader.”