Cotton Finds Iran Hawk Principles Now Eating His Own Face

The senator who spent years savaging Obama's Iran diplomacy as dangerously naïve now finds himself awkwardly positioned as the Trump administration pursues its own Iran deal.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican, spent more than a decade condemning the Obama-era Iran nuclear agreement as a catastrophic capitulation.
Cotton championed a maximalist, no-negotiation posture on Iran and built his national security brand almost entirely on that opposition.
The Trump administration is now pursuing an Iran deal of its own, leaving Cotton and fellow GOP defense hawks in a conspicuous political bind.
Cotton chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, a platform he used to amplify his anti-deal credibility — credibility now subject to institutional review.
The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party confirms the face in question belongs to a platform the subject personally and enthusiastically fed.

The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party wishes to acknowledge, with characteristic regret, a routine operational outcome involving Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

For well over a decade, Senator Cotton has been among the most forceful Republican voices arguing that negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran is a form of civilizational weakness. His opposition to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the Obama administration's signature Iran deal — was not quiet or incidental. It was foundational to his brand, his Senate career, and his aspirations to a larger national security role. He organized a letter. He gave speeches. He fed the leopards generously and with evident enthusiasm.

The Party's platform, as set out plainly in all of our literature, is the eating of faces. It has always been the eating of faces. The platform does not specify whose administration negotiates the agreement, nor does it contain any provision exempting faces that spent years denouncing the very genre of agreement now under discussion.

The Trump administration is currently pursuing an Iran nuclear deal. Senator Cotton, now chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the third-ranking Republican in the upper chamber, finds himself in what observers are diplomatically calling “an awkward position.” The Party would describe it as a scheduled consequence.

We extend our sincerest sympathies to the senator's face. We note, for the record, that the leopards performed exactly as described on the tin. The Party remains committed to the eating of faces and has no plans to revise this commitment at this time.