{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.gardner.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/foreign-relations-committee-hearing-reveals-obama-administrations-permissive-attitude-towards-iran", "Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Reveals Obama Administrations Permissive Attitude Towards Iran", "2015-12-17", "2015", "2015-12", "Republican", "House", "CO", "Cory Gardner", "G000562", "www.gardner.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Click here to watch.\r\nWashington, DC  In a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) asked witnesses from the State Department to lay out the Administration's plan for dealing with two critical developments regarding with Iran; the Iranian regime's recent illegal ballistic missile tests, and the impending transfer of 25,000 pounds of nuclear material from Iran to Russia.\r\nState Department officials were unable to articulate a plan to deal with either event. In response to the transfer of material to Russia, a State Department official could only state that we are in the midst of negotiating such a plan, but that today we don't have one (exchange begins at 1:41 in above video).\r\nIn response to Iran's illegal ballistic missile tests, officials stated only that we are considering active measures, active consequences (4:15) and we are actively considering what steps to take in response to the October 10th test. (5:11).\r\nSenator Gardner responded to the Administration's lack of action at the end of his questioning (beginning at 6:35):\r\nThis permissive environment that we have created, in which we acknowledge that Iran is going to continue a program of ballistic missile development regardless of the consequences, that we've referred these violations to a committee, that we've talked about it, that we've sternly reprimanded them, we've wagged our finger, has done nothing to protect the American people.\r\nThis committee has, I think, done an incredible job of making sure that we understand the facts. But the fact is, we don't have the response  and the actions to back it up  when Iran has clearly violated. In fact, we haven't taken any of the steps necessary to prevent them from growing their ballistic missile program, which they will and has been admitted here.\r\n\r\n###\r\nCory Gardner is a member of the U.S. Senate serving Colorado. He sits on the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee, and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee, and is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.gardner.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/foreign-relations-committee-hearing-reveals-obama-administrations-permissive-attitude-towards-iran"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7718480192124844, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}