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Congressional Democrats who backed President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran are “soft and gullible,” according to Senator Tom Cotton.

The Arkansas Republican suggested that Obama’s executive agreement with Iran would fail to bar the regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon, just as Bill Clinton’s executive agreement with North Korea proved unsuccessful.

“I think many of these Democrats are simply soft and gullible about the role of power in the world,” he said Tuesday evening. “Too many Democrats in the Senate and the House are soft in the sense that they don’t want to confront evil forces with force when necessary. . . . And they’re gullible to believe that the ayatollahs will follow this agreement.”

Cotton offered the assessment in response to a question at a Constitution Day event sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies, where he argued that the Iran deal could make the constitutional requirement that treaties receive two-thirds’ support in the Senate effectively meaningless.

#share#“This episode, added to the North Korea example, will make it extremely tempting for future presidents to avoid the expenditure of political capital required to pass a treaty,” he said. “Any major agreement, [but] particularly one with a terror-sponsoring adversary, must be implemented with the wide support of the American people and pass the high bar set by the Founders in the treaty clause. If not, it should be rejected.”

The speech played well with the crowd of conservative grassroots activists and donors, prompting one attendee to ask Cotton if he would consider “running in 2020” — a question he dodged with a joke.

“I run every day at least four or five miles on the National Mall,” he joked. “I don’t think any of us are going to want a new Republican to be running in 2020, because I’m confident that we’re going to be working to reelect the Republican that takes office in January 2017 [then].”

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.