On Monday night, the Department of Justice brought the hammer down on Senator Bob Menendez.

Reportedly in response to the senator’s frequent dismissals of the indictment against him as being based on flimsy evidence and FBI’s systematic efforts to mislead a New Jersey grand jury, the DOJ submitted a blistering filing that could – and quite possibly should — imperil the Garden State senator’s career.

Prosecutors alleged that Menendez both solicited and accepted a “stream of bribes” from Florida-based eye doctor Salomon Melgen. The DOJ indicated that Menendez offered and provided quid pro quo in exchange for these favors, which included trips to Paris and the Dominican Republic. But most damningly, the FBI allegedly found “substantial evidence” to indicate that both Melgen and Menendez were “involved in prostitution.” The DOJ indicated that it had “corroborating evidence” that Senator Menendez traveled to the Caribbean “during time frames in which one unidentified alleged minor victim specifically claimed to have had sex with him.”

In 2013, Menendez called the allegations that he had anything to do with an underage prostitution ring “smears” propagated by “anonymous, nameless, faceless individuals” when they appeared in The Daily Caller. Earlier this year, when Menendez was indicted for alleged corruption, he resigned his seat as the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Given the gravity of the charges against him, Menendez may face even more substantial pressure to give up his seat entirely in the coming weeks.

It is also, however, hard to ignore the Justice Department’s conspicuously timed releases in relation to Menendez’s corruption case. Menendez spent the month of March, a crunch period that the P5+1 negotiators spent conceding to Iranian demands in order to emerge from talks in Europe with a framework nuclear deal, telling pro-Israel groups that he would oppose the proposed accord. Along with Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, Menendez sponsored legislation that provided Congress with a period in which they could review and eventually vote on the nuclear accord. On Wednesday, April 1, the DOJ disclosed to the public the indictment against Menendez. On April 2, the administration revealed that it had finally established the framework outlines of a nuclear deal.

But Menendez vowed that he would be vindicated and continued to rail against the deal. He has done so in a way that has been thoroughly damaging to the president’s case, and one that might even convince liberals that Menendez occupies the moral high ground. “Unlike President Obama’s characterization of those who have raised serious questions about the agreement, or who have opposed it, I did not vote for the war in Iraq, I opposed it, unlike the Vice President and the Secretary of State, who both supported it,” Menendez said in a brutal speech last Tuesday taking aim not only at the president but John Kerry and Joe Biden, too. One week later, the other shoe dropped.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is nothing concrete to support the claim that the DOJ is timing the release of information about Menendez’s case in order to blunt the efficacy of his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. Coincidence is not evidence, but it is compelling.

But even if Menendez retains his current role, so long as these charges loom ominously over his political career, it will be difficult for his colleagues to work with him on the Iran issue. “Has any GOP candidate thanked Menendez for his patriotism & said he looks forward to working with him on a bipartisan basis in 2017?” The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol recently asked. The answer was no, and the reasoning is obvious in hindsight; the negative political spots write themselves. Republicans might support Menendez’s position, but they dare not be identified with him.

And what about the other side of the aisle? Even if Menendez continues to speak out bluntly and passionately against the Iran deal, who among his Democratic colleagues will join him? Though Senator Chuck Schumer admirably expressed opposition toward the deal, he has declined to speak out against it with the same fervor his colleague from New Jersey has. Despite the deal’s glaring flaws, Democrats like Harry Reid and Debbie Stabenow came out in favor of it just this week. Meanwhile, President Obama is still aggressively promoting the deal, only yesterday calling those who oppose the accord “crazies.” It seems unlikely that any Democrats will bristle at the president’s abrasive characterization.

Even if the charges against Menendez are resolved in a way that leaves the senator’s career intact – a big “if” — it seems unlikely that his opposition to the Iran deal will retain the force of principle it had just last week.