In July 2015, the United States and five other countries concluded an agreement with Iran concerning that country’s nuclear program . The negotiations were difficult and the deal that was reached was complex, but it was based on a simple tradeoff. Iran would get relief from economic sanctions and, in return, it would dismantle parts of its nuclear infrastructure and place limitations on the rest. The goal was to provide the world assurances that the program would not be used to construct nuclear weapons .
With seven countries participating in the negotiations and a long history of mistrust between some of them, especially the United States and Iran, it was a miracle the talks finally produced an accord. Their successful conclusion was hailed by some as the greatest foreign policy victory of the Obama administration.1
Those who opposed the deal could not condemn it strongly enough, however. Opposition among Republicans in Congress even took the form of what some thought was a criminal act. In March 2015, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas drafted a letter about the agreement that 47 of the 54 Republican senators signed.2 It was remarkable that so many of Cotton’s colleagues were ready to follow his leadership given that he had, at that point, been in the Senate for less than ten weeks. Neither his lack of experience nor his penchant for conspiracy theories deterred them. For instance, he believes that Iraq was involved in 9/11 , that ISIS and Mexican drug cartels will inevitably form a partnership, and that signing up for Obamacare will get one’s identity stolen by Russian hackers. None of that diminished the enthusiasm of his colleagues for adding their names to his letter.3
Cotton lost no time once he took office, in becoming in a matter of weeks “one of the most aggressive national security hawks in the Senate, audaciously challenging Obama’s foreign policy with harsh rhetoric and confrontational tactics.”4 The purpose of the “open” letter, which was addressed to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,”5 was to undermine the negotiations by pointing out that the next American president could reverse any agreement with the stroke of a pen.6 The letter supposedly sought to instruct Iranian leaders on this point since they “may not fully understand our constitutional system.”
Cotton made clear his objective in a speech at the right-wing Heritage Foundation , when he said “the end of these negotiations isn’t an unintended consequence of congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence.” Cotton asserted that Iran is “not a rational or peaceful actor; it is a radical, Islamist tyranny whose constitution explicitly calls for jihad.”7
The focus and intensity of Senator Cotton’s
attempts to derail the Iran nuclear
deal just might be linked to the fact that he received millions of dollars from fervently pro-Israel
billionaires . A
New York Times article by Eric Lipton
described some of the money trail connecting Cotton
and other opponents of the deal:
The Emergency Committee for Israel , led by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard , spent $960,000 to support Mr. Cotton . In that same race, Paul Singer , a hedge fund billionaire from New York and a leading donor to pro-Israel causes, contributed $250,000 to Arkansas Horizon , another independent expenditure group supporting Mr. Cotton . Seth Klarman , a Boston-based pro-Israel billionaire , contributed $100,000. The political action committee run by John Bolton, the United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush and an outspoken supporter of Israel , spent at least $825,000 to support Mr. Cotton .8
Whether motivated by money or ideology, Cotton’s intervention in foreign affairs was labeled by some as unprecedented, illegal and even treasonous.9 Editorial writers in newspapers from coast to coast expressed their outrage and most condemned the attempt to sabotage the diplomatic process.10 In an editorial titled “Republican Idiocy on Iran,” the New York Times said the letter was a disgraceful and irresponsible attempt to scare Iranians from making any deal.11
The outrage was not limited to newspaper editors. Over 320,000 people signed a petition to the White House asking that those who sent the letter be tried for violation of the Logan Act.12 The White House ignored the petition and declined to order the Justice Department to even consider prosecution.
The origins and history of the Logan Act illustrate the evolution of political speech in America. As explained by University of
Texas law professor Steve Vladeck
in an article in the
Atlantic:
The law dates back to 1799, and it was enacted at a very different moment in American history. We were much more into punishing partisan political differences as crimes at that moment. This was the same Congress that passed the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts . The Logan Act was basically a response to an effort by a Philadelphia Quaker named George Logan to try to negotiate directly with the French government. This was a big scandal at the time in foreign affairs because Logan —a Democratic-Republican—was trying to thwart the policy of the Federalists, who controlled both houses of Congress and the White House . It was a controversy back at home, and Congress took none too kindly to this effort to circumvent them or President Adams on a question of diplomatic relations.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that the Supreme Court really breathed life into the First and Fifth Amendments when it comes to prosecuting individuals for their speech or their conduct. At the Founding, there was much more tolerance for the idea that someone could be sent to jail for nasty speech, for libelous speech, for partisan political opposition. The partisan politics of that day were often unbound by what we today think of as obvious constitutional constraints, just because the Supreme Court had not recognized them yet. At that time, Congress thought more capaciously about its power to punish speech, in ways that we would never think a contemporary Congress would act because of the intervening development of our modern First and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence.13
While the Logan Act has been law for over 200 years, no one has ever been succ...
