President Donald Trump said while speaking at the White House on Tuesday that the United States is “in negotiations right now” with Iran, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are involved in the talks, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.
Watch Trump’s remarks in the video player above.
“We have a number of people doing it,” Trump said. “And the other side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal.”
WATCH: Trump says Iran wants ‘deal’ to end war, but regime denies talks and strikes continue
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf denied on Monday that Iran was negotiating with the U.S. to end the war.
Hours earlier, Trump had said that Iran wanted to reach a deal to end the war as it entered its fourth week.
Iran refuted that there had been any high-level communications with the White House and dismissed Trump’s rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate jittery global markets.
“No negotiations have been held with the US,” Qalibaf posted on X. “And fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
In a social media message timed before markets opened, Trump said he was putting off for five days plans he announced over the weekend to bomb Iran’s power plants unless Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz by Monday evening.
The critical passageway for some 20% of the world’s crude has been effectively shuttered during the war, sending oil and gas prices soaring.
He decided to hold back on targeting Iran’s critical infrastructure, Trump explained, because Kushner and Witkoff had “very good” talks over the weekend with unnamed “respected” Iranian officials on ending hostilities.
