On September 18, Congress passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which targets Russia’s energy revenues and threatens tariffs against the world’s largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas. But while the legislation may have been designed to constrain Russia, it looks less like a sanctions measure and more like an instrument of economic statecraft against major buyers such as India and China.
In the short term, the new law serves as an important political purpose: Congress gets to demonstrate resolve against Russia, signal support for Ukraine, and show that it is willing to raise the economic costs of the war for the Kremlin. The House approved the legislation in its final legislative window before lawmakers left Washington to focus on the midterms. At a minimum, the bill allows members of Congress to return home and argue that they acted.
However, the most consequential part of the legislation may not be political optics, but rather legal architecture. Section 113 authorizes tariffs of up to 100 percent on major purchasers of Russian oil and gas and on countries facilitating sanctions evasion, while section 115 gives the president broad waiver authority if doing so is deemed in the national interest. Together, these provisions create something very different from a standard sanctions regime: The ability to impose, delay, suspend, or altogether waive tariffs creates leverage. The value of the law may therefore lie less in the tariffs themselves than in the uncertainty surrounding when, how, and against whom they might be used.
by Shashwat Kumar/CSIS – The New Sanctioning Russia Act: Optics for Now, Leverage for Later
