Iranian Foreign Minister Responds to Senate Republicans’ Letter

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif returned fire on Monday night after receiving an “unprecedented” letter signed by 47 Republican senators.

Responding on Twitter, directly to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton — who took the lead on the senators’ letter — he called it “mostly a propaganda ploy” with “no legal value.”

.@SenTomCotton ICYMI my response. In English. http://t.co/jEleaAjGaG pic.twitter.com/9482aLbSC6

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) March 10, 2015

In fact, Zarif cast aspersions on the letter’s claim that a future U.S. president could simply revoke American obligations to any deal simply because it was agreed to under an old administration, particularly, he noted, since the deal would not be a bilateral one, but a multilateral agreement involving all of the P5 nations.

Zarif also threw back some of the letter’s language at the signers, questioning whether they are “fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.”

On Monday, Cotton and 46 other Senate Republicans wrote to Zarif, noting that Obama’s presidency ends in January 2017 and most senators would still have their job beyond that time. Essentially, the letter argued that a deal not approved by the Republican-controlled Congress would be unlikely to last past Obama’s administration.

Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.