As a Republican-led effort to warn Tehran that the next U.S. president likely won’t honor any nuclear deal that lacks congressional approval has yielded little new news since the warning was first sent Monday, newsrooms across the country have since turned their attention to the man behind the GOP’s message to Iran: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Online news sites and cable news television have kept after the freshman senator and U.S. Army veteran, with many of the usual players staking out familiar positions, even as the story of 47 Republican senators signing the Tehran letter disappeared Thursday from the front pages on major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
“Tom Cotton Stands Firm Against Left, Media: Obama ‘Paving The Path’ for Iran to Get Nuke,” Breitbart News said in a glowing headline.
“Tom Cotton: ‘Surprised’ Hillary Clinton not standing up for constitutional powers of Congress,” the Washington Times added in a headline of its own.
Other websites, including Politico and the Washington Post, monitored reports that Republicans who didn’t sign on to the letter have been “surprised by the backlash” it has created in the nation’s capital.
And some websites have focused on how the letter could actually harm Cotton.
Vox, a so-called “explainer” website, wasn’t nearly as impressed with Cotton as certain right-leaning websites, as the website founded by Ezra Klein warned in one headline that the Iran letter “could blow up” in the Arkansas senator’s face.
Meanwhile, over in the world of 24-hour cable news, Fox News’ Megyn Kelley seemingly echoed Vox’s warning, telling the freshman senator in an interview this week that the letter may have made things worse.
“But what’s the point in writing to the Iranian mullahs? What are you gonna do?” she asked.
“They dismissed it already like ‘pfft, whatever,’ and you’ve offended the Obama administration and you may have offended some of the Democrats who would have come over with the Republicans depending on what happens with this deal, to have a stronger say in the Senate,” she said.
Cotton maintained in that interview that the letter was important to let American voters know that the White House may be considering a deal that would allow Iran to go nuclear.
Later, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren appeared similarly unimpressed with Cotton and his letter, accusing the Arkansas senator Wednesday evening of “rubbing the president’s nose in it.”
“Why do you have to do it this way? I mean, why do you have to become pen pals essentially with the Iranian leadership?” she asked, suggesting later that Cotton could have just submitted an op-ed to a major U.S. newspaper.
“But, you know, here it does look like you are end-running the president.” She added later, “If you had done that you would have the same effect. What you wouldn’t have is sort of bypassing the president and having sort of that symbolic gesture of going directly to Iran,” she said.
Cotton again maintained that the letter was important to raise awareness to a bad Iranian nuclear deal.
Elsewhere, as Republicans and the White House have already staked out their respective positions, leaving little new news to be reported, the story shifted Thursday from front pages over to opinion columns.
And there was no shortage of opinions Thursday on the Cotton-led effort to warn Tehran about its forthcoming deal with the White House.
The New York Times editorial board described Cotton’s letter as “disgraceful” and “irresponsible.”
“The letter was an attempt to scare the Iranians from making a deal that would limit their nuclear program for at least a decade by issuing a warning that the next president could simply reverse any agreement. It was a blatant, dangerous effort to undercut the president on a grave national security issue by communicating directly with a foreign government,” the board said in a note Thursday evening.
“The best and only practical way to restrain Iran from developing a bomb is through negotiating a strict agreement with tough monitoring. In rejecting diplomacy, the Republicans make an Iranian bomb and military conflict more likely,” the note said.
A Reuter’s op-ed, titled “Relax, Israel — if your ally is working with your enemy, it doesn’t make them friends,” suggested GOP concerns over a possible nuclear deal with Iran may be misplaced.
Elsewhere, on the not-as-opinionated side of things, Bloomberg News’ Dave Weigel suggested that although the letter to Tehran may cause some blowback for Cotton, it will likely increase his standing in the Republican Party.
“After the controversy is over, Cotton is likely to end up in the same position as the Democrats who attempted to undermine Ronald Reagan’s Iran negotiations — secure within the party, safe for re-election, taking advantage of bigger microphones,” he wrote. He also cited a widely circulated petition – it already has roughly 231,445 signatures! – demanding that the 47 Republican senators be arrested for the letter to Tehran and charged with treason.
