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In a new low for bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy, 47 Republican senators have issued an “open letter” addressed to the Iranian leadership that is intended to sabotage prospects for a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran by cultivating doubt about the credibility and reliability of the American president. Although the letter has drawn wide reproach as a partisan tactic and a dangerous precedent, it might just accomplish what it was intended to do — reinforce the paranoia of the Iranian regime and scuttle long-awaited progress toward a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear impasse.

The letter asserts the primacy of Congress — and, by extension, the Republicans — in determining the longevity of any nuclear agreement between Iran, the United States, and the five other world powers involved in the negotiations. “Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the letter stresses, adding that “(t)he next president could invoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of an agreement at any time.” Just in case the message wasn’t clear, the letter emphasized that Obama would be out of office in a matter of months while “many of us [the 47 signatories] will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades.”

The letter was organized by freshman senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), a rising GOP star who only weeks ago sneered that Obama’s own letters to Iranian leaders reminded him of “a lovestruck teenager.”

The release of the letter provoked sharp criticism from the administration and well beyond. Obama accused the Republicans of aligning themselves with Iranian hard-liners against diplomacy and in favor of war; Vice President Joe Biden described the letter as “beneath the dignity of an institution I revere” and “highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments-a message that is as false as it is dangerous.”