page_title: Tom Cotton
section_title: Iran
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Cotton / Foreign policy positions / Iran
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo delivers remarks on &quot;Supporting Iranian Voices” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California on July 22, 2018.
context_page_description: Thomas Bryant Cotton is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015, and has served as the junior United States Senator from Arkansas since 2015.
  In 2005, Cotton was commissioned in the United States Army, where as an infantry officer he rose to the rank of captain. His military record includes service in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman Badge. He was elected as the U.S. Representative for Arkansas's 4th congressional district in 2012 and to the Senate at age 37 in 2014, defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor.
context_section_description: In 2013, Cotton introduced legislative language to prohibit trade with relatives of individuals subject to U.S. sanctions against Iran. According to Cotton, this would include "a spouse and any relative to the third degree," such as, "parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids." After Cotton's amendment came under harsh criticism regarding its constitutionality, he withdrew it.
  In March 2015, Cotton wrote and sent a letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, signed by 47 of the Senate's 54 Republicans, which cast doubt on the Obama administration's authority to engage in nuclear-proliferation negotiations with Iran. It could, they asserted, be rejected "with the stroke of a pen" by the next president. The open letter was released in English as well as a poorly-translated Persian version, which "read like a middle schooler wrote it", according to Foreign Policy. Within hours, commentators suggested that the letter prepared by Cotton constituted a violation of the Logan Act. Questions were also raised as to whether it reflected a flawed interpretation of the Treaty Clause of the United States Constitution.
  President Barack Obama mocked the letter, referring to it as an "unusual coalition" with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as an interference with the then-ongoing negotiations of a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. In addition, Obama said, "I'm embarrassed for them. For them to address a letter to the Ayatollah – the Supreme Leader of Iran, who they claim is our mortal enemy – and their basic argument to them is: don't deal with our President, 'cause you can't trust him to follow through on an agreement ... That's close to unprecedented."
  Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, responded to the letter by saying "[the senators'] letter in fact undermines the credibility of thousands of such mere executive agreements that have been or will be entered into by the US with various other governments". Zarif pointed out that the nuclear deal is not supposed to be an Iran–US deal, but an international one, saying that "change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran's peaceful nuclear program." He continued, "I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law."
  Cotton defended the letter amid criticism that it undermined the president's efforts, "It's so important we communicated this message straight to Iran... No regrets at all... they already control Tehran, increasingly they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad and now Sana'a as well." He continued to defend his action in an interview with MSNBC by saying, "There are nothing but hardliners in Iran. They've been killing Americans for 35 years. They kill hundreds of troops in Iraq. Now they control five capitals in the Middle East. There are nothing but hardliners in Tehran and if they do all those things without a nuclear weapon, imagine what they'll do with a nuclear weapon."
  Cotton received extensive financial support from pro-Israel groups due to his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and for his hawkish stance toward Iran. Several pro-Israel Republican billionaires who contributed millions of dollars to William Kristol's Emergency Committee for Israel spent $960,000 to support Cotton.
  In July 2018, Cotton introduced the Iran Hostage Taking Accountability Act, a bill that would call for the president to compose a list of Iranians that were "knowingly responsible for or complicit in...the politically-motivated harassment, abuse, extortion, arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, or imprisonment" of Americans and have those on the list face sanctions along with enabling the president to impose sanctions on their family members and bar them from entering the United States. Cotton stated that Ir
caption: Cotton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2018
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