Sen. Tom Cotton on Sunday defended his move to send a letter signed by 47 GOP senators to Iranian leaders that warned against signing a nuclear deal with President Obama.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the Arkansas Republican said it was imperative that the GOP tell Iran directly that Congress must sign off on a nuclear deal if that deal is to last beyond Obama’s presidency.
“Iran’s leaders needed to hear the message loud and clear,” Cotton said.
Cotton said he disagrees with a statement made Sunday by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who said Cotton’s letter was akin to a senator calling Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis and telling him Congress wouldn’t back a deal President Kennedy made with him.
“More fundamentally, what we did was to send a clear message to a dictatorial regime,” Cotton said. “We didn’t coddle or conciliate with the dictators in Iran. We told them that the American people, 71 percent of the American people in a recent poll, will not accept a deal that puts Iran on the path to nuclear weapons. Seventy-one percent of the American people are right, and that is for whom we’re speaking.”
Republicans have come under fire for the letter, even by Democrats who back legislation that would require Congress to sign off on a nuclear deal struck between the Obama administration and Iranian leaders.
Seven Senate Republicans refrained from signing the letter, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
“I just want to make sure. Do you feel that you have not weakened the president’s hand here?” host Bob Schieffer asked Cotton. “And do you have any regrets about the way you went about this?”
Cotton answered, “No regrets at all.”
