Iran parliament speaker says US president using idea of talks to ‘escape quagmire in which US and Israel are trapped’.Senior Iranian officials have denied that Iran held talks with the United States, just hours after US President Donald Trump claimed “very good and productive conversations” had taken place towards ending the war.Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post on Monday that “no negotiations have been held with the US”.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“Fakenews [sic] is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.That echoed earlier remarks from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei, who also denied that any discussions with the US had taken place.In comments shared by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Baghaei said that “messages have been received from some friendly countries regarding the US’s request for negotiations to end the war”.The denials come as the US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its fourth week, with the Israeli military saying on Monday that it had launched a fresh wave of attacks on the Iranian capital, Tehran.Iran also has continued to fire missiles and drones across the wider Middle East and essentially shut the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies transit.That has sent global energy prices soaring and raised concerns about the war’s escalating toll on people around the world.On Saturday, Trump had threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the country did not open the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels within 48 hours. Advertisement But in an all-caps Truth Social post on Monday morning, the US president said he had instructed the US De …
