A University of Melbourne academic has denied collaborating on research with the speaker of Iran’s parliament – who has been leading Tehran’s peace negotiations with the US – saying he was named as an author on a journal article without his knowledge. On Monday Guardian Australia revealed that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, had built extensive ties to Australia over the past decade, including links to a University of Melbourne engineering research centre. In March 2023, Ghalibaf – a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander – appeared as co-author of a journal article with a University of Melbourne engineering academic, Prof Abbas Rajabifard, who leads the research centre that employed Ghalibaf’s son Eshagh seven years earlier. On Tuesday, Rajabifard told the Guardian he had “no involvement in the article” and had the journal remove his name from the paper earlier this year.…