16 April 2015

Tom Cotton: Obama's Iran Deal May Lead to Nuclear War

APR 13 2015

The hawkish junior senator from Arkansas discusses the president's motivations—and his own.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/APTom Cotton strikes me as the most interesting Senate freshman for any number of reasons, not least of which is his uncanny ability to draw attention to himself, most notably when he convinced 46 of his Republican colleagues to sign an open letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. In the letter, Cotton, the extremely junior senator from Arkansas—he's the youngest member of the Senate, at 37—and his co-signers warned Khamenei that Congress might use its power to overturn or, at the very least, modify whatever agreement the Iranian regime eventually chooses to sign with President Obama and his great-power allies.

The letter made Cotton a hero among those who believe, as he told me in an interview last week, that Obama's deal is not a deal at all, but instead simply a "list of concessions." To his critics, Cotton's decision to argue publicly to a longstanding American adversary that the U.S. president's word is not binding was semi-mutinous or, at a minimum, despicable.

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