Who is Tom Cotton and what did he say to Iran?

Who is Senator Tom Cotton and why are so many people worried about a letter he wrote to Iran?

Cotton is the youngest sitting member of the U.S. Senate. He’s 37 years old. He is also an Iraq war veteran and Harvard-trained lawyer from Arkansas who feels that Iran cannot be trusted with any nuclear centrifuges.

He has no intention of apologizing for that open letter he sent to Iran’s leaders.

Even as CBS’s Nancy Cordes pointed out to him – our allies in the current nuclear negotiations have called it unhelpful. But he responed, “Well, all we said was the basic facts of constitutional law under our constitution.”

“You probably wouldn’t be all that upset if this letter ended up interfering with the negotiations,” said Cordes.

“Well, what we all said in the letter is that if we don’t approve the deal, we won’t accept the deal,” he said.

And that’s true.

For example, the letter states that the President’s term ends in two years while Senators, like him, may (quoting from the letter,) “remain in office well beyond then–perhaps decades.”

That’s 100 percent true.

Heck many of them die in office.

Then he says in the letter, “future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Which they could. Again 100 percent true.

But what it’s really saying is, “here are 47 Republicans, who might be in office for life, and who are going to do their damnedest to BLEEP up any agreement they don’t like. Relax, I didn’t actually say the word.

So you can see why the diplomats are worried.

As an analogy – suppose you were negotiating a mortgage with a loan officer. Let’s call that loan officer “Barack” – and you’re just about to sign when the mailman drops a letter on the desk, from 47 members of the bank’s board of directors.

That letter says, “You should know that Barack will be gone in two years, and we could modify this loan agreement at anytime.”

Would you sign?