- As Democrat inauguration boycott grows, over Trump-Lewis row
At the start of his final week in the White House, Barack Obama issued a warning to the incoming Trump administration about the value of the nuclear deal with Iran.
“The United States must remember that this agreement was the result of years of work,” read a statement released by the White House on Monday, which did not mention the new president by name.
The deal, the statement said, “represents an agreement between the world’s major powers – not simply the United States and Iran.”
The White House said the agreement, implemented one year ago on Monday, “must be measured against the alternatives – a diplomatic resolution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is far preferable to an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program or another war in the Middle East.”
Trump has not been as outright hawkish on the deal as other leading Republicans, saying he could seek to renegotiate it instead of tearing it up entirely. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee who Trump considered for secretary of state, said this month the deal would have to be strictly enforced, not scrapped.
Nonetheless, figures including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed hope that Trump will abandon the deal, an eventuality a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said would be a “disastrous”.
In an interview with the Times of London released on Sunday, Trump said he did not want to say “what I’m gonna do with the Iran deal”.
In a somewhat rambling rumination, he added: “I just don’t want to play the cards. I mean, look, I’m not a politician, I don’t go out and say, ‘I’m gonna do this’ – I’m gonna do, I gotta do what I gotta do …
“But I’m not happy with the Iran deal, I think it’s one of the worst deals ever made, I think it’s one of the dumbest deals I’ve ever seen … Where you give … $150bn back to a country, where you give $1.7bn in cash.
“Did you ever see $100m in hundred-dollar bills? It’s a lot. $1.7bn in cash. Plane loads. Many planes. Boom. $1.7bn. I don’t understand. I think that money is in Swiss bank accounts.”
Trump was referring to Iranian assets unfrozen as part of the deal, and to reports of pallets of banknotes being loaded on to planes for transfer which became a running sore among rightwing media during the presidential election.
The White House statement, in contrast, offered a detailed telling of the terms of the deal, which were also agreed by France, Britain, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union and which it said had “rolled back the Iranian nuclear program and verifiably prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”.
“Instead of steadily expanding,” the statement said, “Iran’s nuclear program faces strict limitations and is subject to the most intrusive inspection and verification program ever negotiated to monitor a nuclear program.
“Iran reduced its uranium stockpile by 98% and removed two-thirds of its centrifuges. Meanwhile, Iran has not enriched any uranium at the Fordow facility nor used advanced centrifuges to enrich. In short, Iran is upholding its commitments, demonstrating the success of diplomacy.”
In the meantime, the number of Democratic members of Congress saying they will boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday has increased to 26.
Many have cited as a reason the president-elect’s recent attack on civil rights icon and fellow congressman John Lewis.
Mr Trump lashed out at Mr Lewis on Twitter on Friday after Mr Lewis said he was not a “legitimate president”.
He said that Mr Lewis was “All talk, talk, talk – no action or results”.
Mr Lewis was a prominent member of America’s civil rights movement and is a hero to many Americans. He was among those beaten by police during the infamous Selma-Montgomery voting rights march of 1965.
As Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Day, the children of the slain civil rights leader – a contemporary of Mr Lewis – have spoken out about the spat.
Martin Luther King III played down the row following a meeting with Mr Trump in New York that he described as “very constructive”.
He said that in the heat of the moment “a lot of things get said on both sides”.
But his sister Bernice King told a church audience in Atlanta that “God can triumph over Trump”.
Mr Lewis joined the House of Representatives in 1987 and has served Georgia’s fifth congressional district, which Mr Trump went on to call “crime-infested”, ever since.
The president-elect’s insults, made just days ahead of Martin Luther King Day, were the final straw for a number of Democrats who will break with tradition by missing the inauguration ceremony on Friday.
“When you insult Rep. John Lewis, you insult America,” said Yvette Clarke, one of five representatives for New York who will boycott the event. There are 535 members of Congress, across both houses.
California representative Ted Lieu said: “For me, the personal decision not to attend Inauguration is quite simple: Do I stand with Donald Trump, or do I stand with John Lewis? I am standing with John Lewis.”
Illinois representative Luis Gutierrez was the first member of congress to say he would boycott the inauguration – announcing his decision in December.
“I could not look my wife, my daughters, or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended, as if everything that the candidate said about the women, the Latinos, the blacks, the Muslims, or any of those other things he said in those speeches and tweets, and that all of that is okay or erased from our collective memory,” Mr Gutierrez told the House.
He has said he will attend the alternative Women’s March on Washington the following day.
Guardian with additional report from BBC
