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U.S. President Donald Trump has postponed his “Fake News Awards” to later in the month, instead of Monday so he can attend the college national championship football game.

Trump tweeted last week that he would be “announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty and Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!”

Trump had promised to hold the mock awards show to castigate mainstream news organizations for their coverage of his presidency. But now his fans and the journalists will have to wait another 10 days.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted: “The Fake News Award, those going to the most corrupt and biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated.”

It is not clear how the change in plans will affect “The Global Press Oppression Awards” which were to be presented by the Committee to Protect Journalists at the same time.

The journalism watchdog group CPJ had tweeted last week that it would hold its own awards ceremony to coincide with Trump’s.

“Subjects will cover Thinnest Skinned & Outrageous Use of Law, in various categories for world leaders. Stay Tuned!,” the group said in its tweet.

 
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The Trump administration continues to put a spotlight on North Korea’s nuclear threat and possible avenues to resolve an increasingly tense and loud standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. VOA’s Michael Bowman has this report.
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The unpredictable and aggressive nature of wolf-dog hybrids makes them difficult to keep as household pets. But the founders of the Lockwood Animal Rescue Center in California say the dual nature of these animals makes them ideal therapists for combat veterans who suffer from PTSD. VOA’s Genia Dulot has more on the “Wolves and Warriors” program.
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The United States’ oldest operating nuclear plant has reduced its power after unusually low tides and high winds affected the water levels in its intake canal.

Oyster Creek declared an unusual event around 5:25 a.m. Saturday. That’s the lowest of four emergency classification levels used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Although water levels later returned to normal, plant officials said the unusual event declaration would remain in place until operators confirmed that the environmental anomaly wouldn’t recur with the next tidal change.

A plant spokeswoman says minimum water levels were established “as one of many conservative measures” to ensure that operators have access to multiple and redundant sources of cooling water should the plant need to be shut down quickly.

Oyster Creek is located in Lacey Township, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) east of Philadelphia. 
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About 100 million people faced a new challenge after the whopping East Coast snowstorm: a gusty deep freeze, topped Saturday by a wind chill close to minus 100 on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington that vied for world’s coldest place.

Jaw-clenching temperatures to start the weekend throughout the Northeast hit Burlington, Vermont, at minus 1 and a wind chill of minus 30. Both Philadelphia and New York were shivering at 8 degrees.

And in Hartford, Connecticut, a brutal cold of 10 degrees yielded a wind chill of minus 20.

​Wind chill hits minus 93

On Saturday, winds of more than 90 mph swirled Mount Washington, the Northeast’s highest peak, at a temperature of minus 37 degrees and a wind chill of minus 93. It tied for second place with Armstrong, Ontario, as the coldest spot in the world. It was minus 38 in Eureka, Nunavut, Canada.

Boston, at a relatively balmy 11 degrees, was wrangling with a different kind of challenge: a shortage of plumbers as the weather wreaked havoc on pipes that froze and cracked, Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh reported.

A 3-foot tidal surge brought on by the nor’easter along the Massachusetts coast was the highest recorded in nearly a century. Residents of Boston and its suburbs were cleaning up Saturday after the tide that came in Thursday, flooding streets and forcing some residents to evacuate as the water started to freeze.

​Flights limited

In New Jersey, many people stayed home instead of dealing with single-digit temperatures. Others were cleaning up from the storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in some spots earlier in the week.

“My car felt like an icebox this morning, even though I had the heat on full blast,” Julie Williams said as she sipped coffee inside a Jackson Township convenience store. She was headed to work at a local supermarket and expecting it to be packed.

“People think it’s nuts before a storm happens, with everyone getting milk, bread, etc.” she said, adding with a laugh, “but it’s even worse in the days afterward, because they do the same thing but they’re a little crazy from cabin fever.”

The operators of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport were struggling to recoup from Thursday’s storm.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, said it was working with airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to limit flights into Kennedy on Saturday “until there are adequate gates available to handle the backlog of flights due to recovery of flight schedules in the wake of Thursday’s storm.”

Normal temperatures next week

In Rhode Island, hospitals were treating dozens of storm-related injuries as the region grits through a deep freeze that followed a powerful blizzard.

In Providence and Newport, at least 40 people were treated for various weather-related conditions, from heart attacks, snowblower or shoveling injuries, frostbite and more, according to The Providence Journal.

The storm dropped more than 14 inches of snow on Providence.

Monday is expected to be the first day above freezing since last month. In New York City, temperatures should reach 40 degrees next week.

Even more southern locations didn’t escape the cold; the mercury dipped into the single digits in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., during the weekend, about 20 degrees below normal for this time of year.

Too cold to ski

The high winds and frigid temperatures prompted several ski resorts to close some of their lifts. Bolton Valley in Vermont said there was a general “lack of demand and enthusiasm from skiers and riders.” With a temperature of minus 14 at the summit and minus 11 at the base, the resort canceled evening skiing because of a frostbite warning.

In Vermont’s capital city of Montpelier, with the temperature at minus 5 Saturday, business was slow at La Brioche Bakery but soups were a big seller, said bakery clerk Caroline Cunningham. “Nobody wants to be outside,” she said.

The key strategy for most East Coast residents was to wear layers of clothing.

Brooklyn resident Zelani Miah, who was walking home from running errands Saturday morning, said he wore lots of them.

“Right now, the only thing I put on was just some gloves, a couple sweaters of course, like five or six of them, and two pants basically and boots,” Miah said. “Keep warm, make sure you wear hats.”
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The United States has found no evidence that American diplomats in Havana were the victims of attacks with an unknown weapon, U.S. Senator Jeff Flake said Saturday.

Flake, an Arizona Republican who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and has been a longtime advocate of detente with Cuba, met Friday with high-ranking Cuban officials, including Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and officials from the Interior Ministry, which oversees domestic security and works with foreign law enforcement agencies.

The Cubans told Flake the FBI had told them that its agents, in four trips to Cuba, found no evidence that mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. diplomats were the result of attacks.

Flake told The Associated Press that classified briefings from U.S. officials had left him with no reason to doubt the Cuban account, although he declined to discuss the contents of those briefings.

Cuban and FBI officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

Washington says 24 U.S. government officials and spouses fell ill in Havana in their homes and some hotels starting in 2016. 

Diplomats withdrawn

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said he’s “convinced these were targeted attacks,” but the U.S. doesn’t know who’s behind them. The U.S. has withdrawn most of its diplomats from Havana, citing a health risk, and forced many Cuban diplomats to leave Washington.

Cuba has decried the reductions as an unjustified blow to U.S.-Cuban relations that were restored under President Barack Obama.

“The Cuban Interior Ministry is saying the FBI has told them there is no evidence of a sonic attack. Even though that term is being used, ‘attack,’ there is no evidence of it,” Flake told the AP. “There’s no evidence that somebody purposefully tried to harm somebody. Nobody is saying that these people didn’t experience some event, but there’s no evidence that that was a deliberate attack by somebody, either the Cubans or anybody else. 

“As I said, I won’t talk about what I have seen in a classified setting, but nothing is inconsistent with what the Cubans have said, and I think the FBI would say that.”

Several of the 24 U.S. diplomats and spouses reported hearing loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing, leading some U.S. officials to describe the incidents as “sonic attacks.” But officials are now carefully avoiding that term.

Medical testing has revealed that some embassy workers had apparent abnormalities in their white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, and acoustic waves have never been shown to alter those tracts. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is meeting with key Republican lawmakers and members of his cabinet at the Camp David presidential retreat to establish the administration’s 2018 legislative priorities and to devise a strategy for mid-term elections in November.

“We’re going to Camp David with a lots of the great Republican senators, and we’re making American great again.” the president said when he left the White House Friday en route to the Maryland retreat.

Vice President Mike Pence and several cabinet secretaries will also attend the gathering.

The president is looking for more legislative success after the recent passing of the tax overhaul bill.

Topics on the list of legislative priorities will include the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the November midterm elections.

Lawmakers, however, must work quickly to approve a funding plan by January 19 to avoid a government shut-down.

The future of hundreds of thousands of young adults who entered the U.S. illegally as children is also before Congress. Will they be allowed to stay in the country or will they be deported to a place many of them have no connection to?

Trump has proposed allowing the so-called Dreamers to stay in the country if he receives funding to building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, a promise that goes back to his presidential campaign.  Democrats are likely to give Republicans a furious pushback on the initiative.

Republicans have also been eager to cut benefit programs like welfare and food stamps.

Republican priorities could be stopped in their tracks, however, if Democrats are successful in the mid-term elections.  

Trump has been encountering increasing criticism about his presidential style.  He begins the new year facing the release of a bombshell book, Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, that describes a White House in disarray and a president as child-like and in need of psychiatric help, claims the administration dismisses as laughable.

It remains to be seen how the book and other accounts dismissive of Trump’s leadership will affect elections later this year.

All 435 members of the House and a third of the 100 members of the Senate will be up for re-election November 6.  

 
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The number of hate crimes in major U.S. cities rose for the third consecutive year last year, driven by attacks on Jews, Muslims, blacks and LGBT people, preliminary police data exclusively provided to VOA show.

At least 1,056 hate crimes were committed in the nation’s nine largest cities in 2017, an increase of 18 percent from 2016 levels, according to police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

Several major metropolitan areas, such as Washington, Philadelphia, Seattle and Phoenix, reported double-digit increases in hate-based crimes, extending a trend that started in 2015 and accelerated during the contentious presidential election campaign in 2016.

Among the nation’s five largest cities, the overall increase in hate crimes was smaller; however, the number of reported incidents rose to 719 from 664, an uptick of 8 percent.

​Two declines

The slower rate of increase in those five cities was attributable to two notable declines.

New York City, the nation’s largest city, reported 339 hate crimes, a notch lower than 2016 levels, while Chicago, the third largest U.S. city, recorded 50 hate crimes through the first three-quarters of the year, a decline of 7 percent from the same period in 2016.

But the trajectory of hate crimes remains pointed upward, with 2017 likely to show another moderate rise after similar increases the past two years.

“Whether you have increases or declines, a lot of these cities are at or near multiyear highs,” said Brian Levin, director of the center for the study of hate and extremism.

Hate crime data are notoriously unreliable. The FBI publishes annual hate crime stats collected from thousands of police departments, but reporting is voluntary and most agencies don’t report any incidents.

The FBI’s report also lags by about a year. Its most recent report, released in November, showed there were 6,121 hate crimes in 2016, up 4.6 percent from 5,850 in 2015.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense motivated by the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity or gender identity.

Historically, race has been by far the biggest motivator of hate crime in the United States, with blacks accounting for more than half the victims of race-based offenses.

Religion and sexual orientation are the next two drivers, although in recent years religion-based hate crimes have grown, with crimes targeting Muslims nearly doubling between 2014 and 2016.

In 2017, Jews and the LGBT community accounted for more than half of hate crime victims in the cities surveyed by Levin’s center. Blacks, nationally the most frequent target of hate crime, ranked No. 3, while Muslims, who account for 1 percent of the U.S. population, were at No. 4.

​Homicides

The year was one of the deadliest for victims of hate crimes in more than a decade. At least 12 people were killed in nine separate suspected hate crimes, according to an unofficial tally by the San Bernardino center, although Levin stressed the actual number could turn out to be much higher.

The FBI reported five hate crime killings in 2016 and 19 in 2015, when white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The victims of the 2017 murders included four blacks, three whites, three Middle Easterners/Muslims, one gay man, and one transgender person.

Levin said there was “an alarming increase” in fatal attacks on transgender people. The rights group Human Rights Watch noted a record 28 transgender murders in 2017, but only one has been labeled a hate crime.

Anti-LGBT crimes

Gay-friendly cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Washington have become magnets for violent homophobes.

In Washington, nearly one-third of all hate crimes in 2017 were directed at gays, while in Seattle more than a quarter of hate crime victims were gay. San Francisco data were not available.

​Anti-Semitic bias

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization, recorded 1,299 anti-Semitic incidents during the first three-quarters of last year, an increase of 67 percent from the same period in 2016.

The figure included 168 bomb threats made against Jewish community centers and other organizations. In March, a U.S.-Israeli teen, accused of making most of the threats, was arrested in Israel.

“The bomb threats were an incredibly traumatic event for Jews across the country,” said Aryeh Tuchman, associate director of ADL’s center on extremism.

Among the incidents recorded by ADL were 703 incidents of harassment, 584 instances of vandalism, and 12 physical assaults.

States with the largest Jewish populations reported the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents. New York state led with a total of 267 incidents, followed by California with 197 incidents.

But not everything recorded by ADL was a hate crime, Tuchman said.

Levin said, “The prominence of anti-Semitic incidents in big cities is attributable to multiple factors far beyond the actions of a couple of offenders.”

​Anti-Muslim hate crimes

There were 195 anti-Muslim hate crimes through the first nine months of 2017, a 20 percent increase from the same period in 2016, according to the rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations.

California led the nation with 73 incidents, followed by New York with 20 hate crimes, Florida with 11 incidents and Texas with nine hate incidents, according to CAIR. All four states have large Muslim populations.

Zainab Arain, research and advocacy coordinator for CAIR, attributed the relatively large number of incidents recorded in California and New York to the group’s large footprint and advocacy in those states.

“There is a likelihood of cases being reported more frequently” in California and New York, Arain said.

Property damage and physical assault were the most common hate crimes committed against Muslims.

The FBI reported in November that hate crimes against Muslims rose by nearly 20 percent in 2016 after jumping 67 percent in 2015.

Attacks against Muslims tend to be more violent than those against Jews, Levin said. That is partly because Muslims are “more identifiable when in religious attire and have a much higher degree of prejudice directed towards them,” he said.

In April, for example, a hijab-wearing woman was assaulted by a white man in downtown Los Angeles. A suspect was arrested.

In August, a Somali-American mosque was bombed in Bloomington, Minnesota. No one was hurt.
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Two U.S. senators have called for a criminal investigation of a former British spy who authored a salacious report about Donald Trump when he was a businessman, a report known as the Steele Dossier.

The letter, released on Friday by Republicans Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, adds to the turmoil that has plagued the Trump administration and will likely deepen the bipartisan rancor in Congress over both the dossier and also interactions between Trump associates and Russian officials. 

In their letter, the two called on the Justice Department to investigate Christopher Steele for what they alleged were false statements Steele made about how the dossier was circulated. 

“This referral does not pertain to the veracity of claims contained in the dossier,” the senators said in a statement.

Steele and his lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment. 

Former British spy

Steele, a former MI6 officer with deep experience in Russia, was hired by a Washington-based political research firm known as Fusion GPS in the summer 2016. 

Fusion had earlier been retained by a Republican donor interested in gathering embarrassing political dirt on Trump, but after Trump won the Republican nomination, Fusion was hired by a law firm with connections to the Democratic Party. 

Steele’s research, which focused on Russia and Trump’s ties there, resulted in a 35-page report that circulated among political operatives and reporters in Washington for months until BuzzFeed published the entire dossier online in January 2017. 

News reports have said the FBI had considered paying Steele for more research but later decided not to. 

Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations in the dossier. Some Republicans have also asserted that the dossier was what prompted the FBI to open its criminal investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s interactions with Trump-connected officials, something contradicted by court documents and other public statements. 

Grassley calls for inquiry

Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier called for a Justice Department investigation of Fusion GPS, suggesting the firm was involved in a Russian-linked lobbying campaign to undermine the 2012 U.S. Magnitsky Act, which punishes Russians deemed to be human rights abusers. 

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times on Tuesday, the founders of Fusion GPS accused Republican lawmakers of trying to obscure Trump’s Russian connections and called on Grassley to release transcripts of their testimony to the Judiciary Committee. 

The Judiciary Committee is one of three congressional panels investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russian officials. 

The FBI probe, now taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, has resulted in two indictments and two guilty pleas, including from Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
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U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at the media Friday as a provocative new book hit the stands portraying the first year of his presidency as one in shambles, and him as childlike and possibly in need of psychiatric help.

In a morning tweet, Trump did not mention author Michael Wolff or his sensational book Fire and Fury by name, but said “the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable.”

Wolff said Friday he stands by “absolutely everything” in the book. “One of the things we have to count on is that Donald Trump will attack. He will send lawyer’s letters. This is a 35-year history of how he approaches everything,” he told NBC’s Today show host Savannah Guthrie. “My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on Earth at this point.

“I will tell you the one description that everyone gave, everyone has in common: They all say he is like a child,” Wolff said on NBC. “And what they mean by that is, he has a need for immediate gratification. It is all about him.”

On Thursday, Trump denied granting Wolff access to the White House, and he planted a new nickname on his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is quoted extensively in the book as making disparaging statements about his former boss and members of his family and inner circle.

Trump’s lawyers initially tried to block publication of the book, describing it as defamatory and libelous. That only added to the frenzy at bookstores where it was available early Friday, several days ahead of schedule. Long lines formed outside some Washington stores where the book went on sale at midnight.

Several independent sources have noted that author Wolff is known for publishing provocative material that has turned out to be unsubstantiated or disputed.

Veteran Washington reporter Mike Allen, in his widely-read Axios Newsletter, cautioned Friday “there are definitely parts of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” that are wrong, sloppy, or betray off-the-record confidence.”

Allen said, however, there are many things Wolff got right, “even in the eyes of White House officials who think some of the book’s scenes are fiction. His spot-on portrait of Trump as an emotionally erratic president, and the low opinion of him among some of those serving him.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Wolff on Friday of fabricating quotes for the book.

“This is a guy who made up a lot of stories to try to sell books, and I think more and more people are starting to see that his facts just simply don’t add up,” Sanders told Fox News.

Sanders acknowledged that Trump had spoken with Wolff, but she said it was not for the book. “They spoke once by the phone for a few minutes, but it wasn’t about the book. They had a very short conversation, but he never interviewed the president about the book,” she said.

At Thursday’s White House press briefing, Sanders suggested the book has little interest outside Washington’s beltway, where politics is something of an obsession.

“Most people in the United States could “probably care less about a book full of lies,” she told a reporter, characterizing the book as “trash” and something “a fired employee wanted to peddle.”

Presidential scholar Dan Mahaffee of Washington’s Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress says the book controversy is taking on a cartoon-like character.

“Once the spin starts you get this cloud surrounding everything, and it becomes a media frenzy,” Mahaffee said in a VOA interview. “It reflects the arrival of a reality-TV mindset to American politics.”

Mahaffee said the constant cable TV coverage of the book has diverted attention from almost all other events in Washington, including some favorable to Trump and others the president might want to hide, such as Thursday’s move by the administration to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans.

“In a normal environment, we’d be talking about how all the waters in the United States are open to oil drilling. Something that would be the top of every headline is overshadowed by this circus,” Mahaffee said.
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Senator Ben Cardin, (D-MD), the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spoke to VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren about Iran and North Korea. The following is a full transcript of the interview.

Van Susteren: “Senator, thank you very much for joining me.”

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD): “My pleasure. It’s good to be with you.”

Van Susteren: “Senator, there is a lot going on in Iran. There have been a series of protests sparked, at least at first, according to many as an economic issue, they have now somewhat subsided but what are your thoughts on these protests?”

Cardin: “Well, the Persian people, the Iranians, are great people; they want freedom, they want economic opportunities. They were promised a lot that has not been delivered so there’s a great deal of frustration among the Iranians that why aren’t they doing better why aren’t there better opportunities. They see their leadership, their government, is holding them back so they’re expressing themselves and I think we should all be proud of their courage.”

Van Susteren: “What about the response by the Trump administration to these protests? I know that there was criticisms—President Trump and, even Vice President Pence, has been critical of the Obama administration and President Obama waited a number of days before making a statement. Maybe President Trump made a statement earlier on Twitter; but, nonetheless they are just statements. Is there anything more that we should be doing in Iran about these protests?”

Cardin: “The question is what can you do? I mean these are obviously internal issues and it’s hard for us to get directly involved. But to the extent that the Iranian officials violate established international human rights standards we should take action. We have tools that we can use to take action against violations of human rights. People have a right to peacefully protest about their government, they should have the right to be able to speak out without intimation or fear. In Iran that’s not true. So, it is right for us and we do impose sanctions against Iran for human rights violations. We’ve recently passed a new law, known as the Global Magnitsky, we can sanction individuals and in regards to our banking system or visas. So, there are steps that we can take against those who are perpetrating violations of human rights and we should working with the international community.”

Van Susteren: “How fast can we do those sanctions? I mean if sanctions are the proper response, how fast can we do that?”

Cardin: “Well, they can be done quickly. I mean obviously there’s some—when you are dealing with banking issues there’s due process that has to follow and the Treasury Department follows that pretty closely; but we can impose sanctions pretty quickly we have against Iran. We do have sanctions imposed against Iran for human rights we can strengthen those.”

Van Susteren: “Going back about the 2015, you were opposed to the original Iran Deal, the Nuclear Deal. Why were you opposed to it?”

Cardin: “Well, for several reasons. First, it started with the allowing Iran to enrich uranium which I thought they did not need to do. So, it started with a premise that allowed them to have enriched uranium which one day could be used for a nuclear weapon. Secondly, it took away, I thought, a lot of the leverage we had the deal with the non-nuclear violations concerning their ballistic missiles, our sponsoring of terrorism, the human rights violations, even though we can still do that by releasing some of our sanction relief it makes them more challenging to deal with these other issues.”

Van Susteren: “All right, so fast forward to now President Trump in, I think, October said that he was not going to recertify the deal, so where does that lead us now and what is your position on that?”

Cardin: “Well, I think it would be wrong for the United States to walk away from an agreement. We would be isolated, we would be the bad guys when Iran is the bad actor their government is the one violating international laws. We should spotlight on Iran’s compliance with the agreement and the agreement is lifetime. They’re not allowed to have a nuclear weapon or develop nuclear weapons. We need now to make sure that in fact is enforced and Iran never becomes a nuclear weapons state.”

Van Susteren: “I thought there was a period of time as a ten-year deal?”

Cardin: “There’s different limits as to what certain standards have to be complied with. But it’s lifetime that they are not allowed to have a nuclear weapon. So, we can hold them to that and we need to enforce that.”

Van Susteren: “Are you satisfied with the level of inspection that we’re getting. Are we getting the—is the IAEA getting the access it needs to make sure they aren’t violating agreement?”

Cardin: “We’ve had the secretary general of the IAEA in Congress, we’ve asked him specifically whether there’s any additional needs for inspections. He believes he’s had all the access he needs, everywhere he needs to be so there’s been no complaint to date about the denial of access.”

Van Susteren: “So are you confident today, as much as one can be, confident today that Iran met its side of the deal as to where it should be on this agreement?”

Cardin: “As it relates to its nuclear commitments, the individuals who are responsible for the enforcement of this agreement believe that Iran has complied with the agreement. Had there been minor violations at times, yes and they’ve been corrected. But as far as any material breach, there has not been a material breach by Iran.”

Van Susteren: “So Iran doesn’t keep you up at night as it relates to nuclear weapons? Doesn’t keep you up at night?”

Cardin: “Today it does not. I do worry long term about their ability to be nuclear weapons state because of how do we enforce it beyond the sunset dates? That is a concern.

Van Susteren: “What’s a long term for you? What’s the…”

Cardin: “Well there’s 8 years more of the specific limits on what they can do in centrifuges and research and issues like that. After that period of time, although they’ll prevent it from being a nuclear weapons state, those limits no longer apply. So the question is how do you enforce beyond the 8 years?”

Van Susteren: “In terms of what has just transpired, now the protests seem to at least the reports as much we can tell seem the protests have died down a little bit. Do you think by not doing more than sort of just issuing a statement that we’re with you to the Iranian people we have now so taken the wind out of their sales and they’re going to feel very discouraged and there’s going to be no sort of pressure on their government to meet human rights requirements and a greater opportunity for the people?”

Cardin: “This is a delicate line we have to walk. This is the Iranian people speaking out against their government. It’s not the United States encouraging people to do things they don’t want to do. To the extent that we get actively engaged, it will be used by the Iranian officials to say this is the United States not the Iranian people.”

Van Susteren: “Well they’ve already said that. They say their enemies have done it which means Israel and the United States. That’s what the hard lines clerics are saying that we’re responsible for this.”

Cardin: “And we don’t want to give them any ammunition for what they’re saying. We know that the Iranian’s don’t tell the truth about what is happening. Their people know that. They’ve figured this out. You see the protests that are taking place. I think it’s important for us to keep a spotlight on the protestors and do everything we can to keep them safe and to take action against Iran if they violate basic human rights. I think the seeds for protest will remain unless the Iranian leaders change their course and allow the people basic human rights and basic economic freedoms.”

Van Susteren: “Do you have a dialogue at all with the White House on the recertification issue and the deal and even the protests?”

Cardin: “Yes, I’ve talk to Vice President Pence about the protests and we have a resolution that we hope to file – Senator Corker and I, with others that will pass in regards to showing that the United States Senate is behind the rights of the people of Iran to express their views against their government and I’ve been meeting with the representatives of the Trump administration in regards to the certification and waiver issues as to how Congress can be helpful provided that we don’t do anything that will violate the nuclear agreement and that we work closely with our European partners.”

Van Susteren: “Well President Trump seems to take much harder line on this than you do, right? Is that a fair description?”

Cardin: “Well I think President Trump has expressed himself that he believes the agreement should be stronger. And we had pointed out that a lot of his concerns which deal with beyond the requirements of the remaining 8 years that that’s an issue we can work together on. So we are working with the administration to see whether we can clarify some of the provisions as long as it doesn’t violate the JCPOA.”

Van Susteren: “And do you think you’ve convinced the administration or convinced President Trump because he seems to have drawn the line in the sand on this.”

Cardin: “I think the National Security Advisor to the president believes in our National Security interest to remain at the table and not violate the agreement ourselves. What the president will do, that’s hard to tell. The way he makes decisions is not a traditional method used by the presidency of the United States.

Van Susteren: “Are you worried about North Korea with its nuclear weapon?”

Cardin: “Certainly. I think North Korea with Kim Jong Un is doing, that regime, is extremely dangerous. They are clearly developed a nuclear weapon. They are trying to develop a way to deliver that nuclear weapon that could threaten the security of the United States. They have violated the United Nations Resolutions on this. There’s been international sanctions imposed on North Korea as a result of it. We need to further isolate North Korea but then have a surge in diplomacy because there’s not a good military solution here. What we want to do is put the sufficient pressure on North Korea to change course and that means the United States working with China and Japan and South Korea to get a realistic offering to how we can get this crisis over with and put the pressure on North Korea to change directions.”

Van Susteren: “Do you see the routine from North Korea to South Korea, the recent, the reopening of negotiations across that border. Is that a good thing or is that just folly?”

Cardin: “I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s always good to see conversations taking place. It was part of the commitment made by the new regime in South Korea – that they were going to open up more discussion with North Korea. We have the Winter Olympics which gives us an opening for the North and South to talk. I think it’s a good sign that they’re talking.”

Van Susteren: “Senator thank you very much for talking with me.”

Cardin: “It’s always good to be with you.”

 
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