President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama overnight of having “paid off Iran with $Billions,” hours after Obama told a Detroit rally that his nuclear agreement had curbed Iran’s program without military action, saying, “I didn’t have to fire a missile.”
“Obama was a grossly incompetent President! He paid off Iran with $Billions, and gave them a road to a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post published early Sunday, as the United States remains in a war with Iran that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.
Obama had campaigned in Detroit on Saturday, the first day of early voting in Michigan, for Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s U.S. Senate nominee. “We had curbed their nuclear program because I put in place a deal that everybody acknowledged had kept them from getting nukes. I didn’t have to fire a missile. I engaged in diplomacy,” Obama said, according to C-SPAN’s Detroit coverage. El-Sayed told the same crowd that “President Obama, he contained a nuclear threat without war.”
Trump’s money claim refers to a January 2016 settlement of a decades-old dispute over undelivered military equipment. The United States paid Iran $400 million from a trust fund holding Iranian money, plus about $1.3 billion in interest from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, for a total of about $1.7 billion, a Treasury official told Congress in September 2016. Obama said at the time that Iran was being “returned its own funds, including appropriate interest,” in a settlement that “could save us billions of dollars,” according to his White House statement. Separately, the 2015 nuclear deal unfroze Iranian assets held abroad. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018.
Trump went on to say Obama “campaigned hard” for Hillary Clinton, who “lost in all directions and ways,” and then “campaigned full out for Kamala, and likewise, she lost.” Trump won Michigan in 2016 and 2024 but lost it in 2020. In 2024 he carried the state by 80,103 votes, or about 1.4 percentage points, according to the state’s certified results. Clinton won the national popular vote in 2016.
Without naming El-Sayed, Trump wrote that Obama was “now campaigning for a Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist, who hates Jews and Blacks and AMERICANS and TRUMP,” and called him “a Fake Doctor, who runs what is considered to be the WORST CLINIC IN AMERICA.” The post ended, “VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS!” naming El-Sayed’s Republican opponent. Earlier Saturday, at a rally in Georgia, Trump had called “the guy in Michigan” a “phony” and “a radical,” and repeated his practice of calling El-Sayed “Mohammed.”
El-Sayed has said he “absolutely” disavows the Muslim Brotherhood, and Bridge Michigan found no direct evidence supporting Republican claims tying him to the group. He has accused Trump of using “my name and my faith to distract us” from rising costs, The Hill reported.
El-Sayed holds a medical degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in public health from Oxford, but did not complete a residency, is not a licensed physician and does not treat patients, according to a Bridge Michigan fact check. He previously led Detroit’s health department and later Wayne County’s. No record shows him running a clinic.
Trump also wrote, “I won Michigan, BIG, have brought back the Car Industry, the Air Force Base, and everything else. Also, more jobs than ever before.” The base reference appears to concern Selfridge Air National Guard Base, which Trump announced in April 2025 would receive a new F-15EX fighter mission to replace its retiring A-10 jets, according to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office’s announcement. The base had been at risk of losing its fighter mission but never closed.
Michigan had 4,487,000 nonfarm jobs in September, up 2,000 from a year earlier, with unemployment at 5.0%, above the national rate of 4.2%, according to the state’s September jobs report. The report showed manufacturing employment rising by 1,000 jobs in September; Trump did not specify what he meant by bringing back the car industry. The statewide job total remains below the state’s peak of about 4.69 million jobs in 2000, according to a state economic analysis.
The $1.7 billion payment, Trump’s Michigan wins and the Selfridge mission are on the record, but the payment included Iran’s own funds and interest, the base was never lost, and Michigan’s job count is not at a record. Trump’s descriptions of El-Sayed as a “Jihadist,” a “Fake Doctor” and the head of the “WORST CLINIC IN AMERICA” are his own characterizations, which El-Sayed has rejected in the past. Neither El-Sayed, his campaign nor Obama had responded to the post as of early Sunday.