Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Berger Ghalibaf has positioned himself as an unlikely financial advisor during the US-Israel war against Iran.
In a series of posts on X, Ghalibaf urged investors to treat US-led market-moving headlines with skepticism, arguing that “fake news” is often used to manipulate financial and oil markets.
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In a recent post, he wrote: “Caution: Pre-market so-called ‘news’ or ‘truth’ is often just setup for profit taking. Essentially, it is an inverse indicator.”
“Do the opposite: go short when they go up, go long when they go down.
“What’s going on tomorrow? You know the drill.”
Analysts said Ghalibaf’s post should be seen in the context of general online sparring between Tehran and Washington since the start of the war, and reflected a new reality in which social media and conflict increasingly overlap.
There is also some ironic humor woven into the story.
“We are aware of what is happening in the paper oil market, including companies hired to influence oil futures. We are also seeing a broader jaw-breaking campaign,” Ghalibaf said in another post.
“But let’s see if we can convert it into ‘real fuel’ in a pump, or if we can print gas molecules!”
But analysts said there was a deeper calculation at work behind the turmoil.
Here’s what we know:
Why financial “advice” from Mr. Ghalibaf?
This reflects Iran’s use of asymmetric warfare, through which it seeks to demonstrate that it can leverage key economic pressure points to influence U.S. markets, analysts said. This was one of the main reasons for closing the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz connects the Gulf to the open ocean and transports 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies. As expected, the closure of the Strait caused oil prices to rise, increasing economic pressure on the rest of the world.
As part of this approach, Mr. Ghalibaf on March 22 threatened X with financial institutions that play any role in financing U.S. military assets in the Middle East. “The U.S. national debt is steeped in Iranian blood,” he wrote. “We are monitoring your portfolio. This is your last notice.”
Joe Michel, a professor of economics at the University of the West of England in Bristol, told Al Jazeera: “It is widely believed that the decline in the stock market, the rise in energy prices and the rise in interest rates will eventually force[U.S. President Donald]Trump to withdraw from military action and seek a diplomatic solution.”
In doing all this, Ghalibaf is also capitalizing on Trump’s own behavior on social media.
“It has also been noted that the President of the United States makes his most aggressive statements on weekends when markets are closed, and then backslides by the time markets open,” Michel said, noting that Trump’s messages have sometimes been inconsistent.
One example was at the beginning of the trading week on March 23, when less than 12 hours remained until President Trump’s original 48-hour deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. If he did not do so, he threatened to “destroy” Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Just before that deadline expired, President Trump extended it by five days and then promised to refrain from attacks on Iranian energy facilities for another 10 days to allow for further “constructive dialogue.”
Observers said this pattern of behavior gave rise to the acronym “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”), a phrase used by traders looking to bet on the U.S. president leaving.
Zeidun al-Kinani, a Middle East analyst at the Arab Perspective Institute, told Al Jazeera that Iran appears to have figured out how to push the businessman and president’s “pressure points.”
Protracted and unpredictable conflicts can disrupt global markets, and even temporary changes in tempo, such as signs of detente, can be interpreted as an attempt to stabilize investor confidence and limit the impact on the economy, al-Kinani said, adding that speculation, particularly in sensitive sectors such as oil, is itself part of the conflict.
Alkinani explained that this was something that Tehran and Ghalibaf took advantage of by becoming more active in the information field and framing the conflict as both a military and propaganda struggle.
Michel described Ghalibaf’s social media posts as a form of “teasing” the billionaire US president by “also highlighting that markets are increasingly ignoring Trump’s attempts to influence them.”
why words are important
When it comes to financial markets, uncertainty about what will happen can be as powerful a destabilizing factor as direct action, and analysts said Ghalibaf summed it up in his post.
Alkinani explained that the problem is not “Iranian price fluctuations in a mechanical sense,” but how the conflict itself is creating new leverage.
In a market where investors are looking for small signs of how the war will unfold and are wary of President Trump’s unreliable messages, even seemingly playful remarks from Iranian officials like Ghalibaf could increase market volatility, analysts said.
Additionally, al-Kinani said the importance of the Strait of Hormuz extends Iran’s influence beyond the actual disruption of oil supplies, reshaping expectations and market behavior.
He said “Donald Trump’s high profile online” simply amplifies this dynamic, making him a frequent and easy target in the digital sphere.
