Mohammad-Baqer Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, has accused US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of lying in response to his remarks about Washington’s economic pressure on Tehran.
Al Jazeera reported on Saturday, August 29, that Bessent said the United States had helped facilitate the transfer of 130 million barrels of oil in the region over the past 14 days and claimed that the US blockade would “break” Iran’s economy.
In response to the remarks, Ghalibaf referred on X to the “real 130s,” saying that the cost of the war had exceeded $130 billion.
He also claimed that the US company Jane Street Capital had suffered more than $130 million in losses in an oil transaction.
Ghalibaf subsequently published an image of an article by American economist Paul Krugman, which described Bessent’s efforts to influence the cost of borrowing money over the long term in the United States as unsuccessful.
