PM Modi visits President Murmu’s in-laws’ village, explores tribal traditions and way of life

Tom Cotton, the Senate’s foremost Iran hawk, is in a Trump-induced jam

Tom Cotton made his name in Washington as an outspoken critic of a Democratic president’s deal to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with a president of his own party angling toward a similarly structured agreement, the Arkansas Republican is so far using a softer voice. Cotton , the No. 3 Senate Republican and Intelligence Committee chair, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position more than a decade after lambasting President Barack Obama’s Iran deal. But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sell their 14-point “memorandum of understanding” to skeptical Republicans. Cotton moved toward critiquing that framework in a Fox News interview Thursday, crediting Trump for “making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades” while airing concerns that “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.” “We need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we’ve built” against Iran, he said. That is a far cry from the rhetoric Cotton deployed as a freshman senator in 2015, when Obama was moving in concert with other global powers to force Iran to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other economic favors. Cotton led a brash effort to undermine the deal — most notably by organizing a public letter signed by 46 other GOP senators to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then the supreme leader of Iran, warning that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement” that could be nixed by a future administration. The letter enraged the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, but it was prescient. Majority Leader John Thune , like most Senate Republicans, had nothing but praise this week for the “great job” Cotton was doing amid the tumult over the expired spy law and the director of national intelligence drama. “He’s a really strong chair on the committee. And he had it all teed up and ready to go,” Thune said in an interview. “Now it's just … back to the drawing board.