# Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 **H.R. 5334, 119th Congress.** Signed into law **September 18, 2026**. The largest Russia sanctions statute since [[CAATSA]] (2017), and the legislative afterlife of a bill its author spent fifteen months failing to bring to a vote while he was alive. The law imposes blocking and visa sanctions on named Russian figures, authorizes tariffs of **up to 100%** on goods from countries that keep buying Russian energy, targets the sanctions-evasion tanker fleet, and extends the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 through **2031**. ## Legislative history | Date | Step | |---|---| | April 1, 2025 | [[Lindsey Graham]] and [[Richard Blumenthal]] introduce the original **Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025** (S. 1241); [[Brian Fitzpatrick]] introduces the House companion (H.R. 2548). The Senate bill collects **84 cosponsors** — past the two-thirds veto-override threshold — and does not move | | September 11, 2025 | H.R. 5334 introduced in the House | | January 2026 | [[Donald Trump]] endorses the legislation after a meeting with Graham, having withheld support through 2025 | | April 27, 2026 | House passes H.R. 5334 | | **July 11–12, 2026** | **Graham dies in office.** See [[Lindsey Graham]]. His last legislative priority was this bill | | August 7, 2026 | Senate passes an amended version, **86–11** | | **September 16, 2026** | House agrees to the Senate amendment, **262–159**, over the opposition of Democratic leadership | | **September 18, 2026** | Trump signs it into law | The arc is the point. The bill had a veto-proof Senate majority in April 2025 and could not get a floor vote; leadership deferred repeatedly while Trump pursued negotiations with [[Vladimir Putin]]; Graham announced an imminent vote so many times it became a running joke in the Capitol press corps. What finally moved it was his death. Lawmakers in both parties rallied to it as legacy legislation, and the renaming — a bill titled for the senator who could not pass it — is the record of that. ## What the law does - **Mandatory designations.** The President *must* impose property-blocking and visa sanctions on specified persons, a list that reaches the Russian president and named Russian military commanders. - **Energy-purchase tariffs.** The President *must* raise duties up to **100%** on all goods imported from any country that was among the **five largest importers of Russian-origin crude oil or natural gas** and knowingly makes new purchases after enactment. This is the descendant of Graham's original 500% tariff proposal, scaled down in negotiation — and it is aimed, without naming them, at China and India. - **The evasion fleet.** Measures against the **shadow fleet** of tankers that move sanctioned Russian oil behind shell corporations and flags of convenience. See [[Dark Fleet]]. - **Financial sector and energy sector** restrictions on Russian institutions. - **Iran extension.** The Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 is extended through **2031**, folding the Iran file into what began as a Russia bill — a consolidation that followed the [[Iran War 2026]]. - **An unrelated rider.** The Act expands the educator-expense tax deduction to include early childhood educators. ## Why it matters here **The authority is permissive in practice.** The statute hands the executive a large toolkit, and the executive branch that received it is the one that spent 2025 declining to use the tools it already had. Whether a mandatory-sounding designation requirement binds a president who does not want to designate is the open question the vault tracks across the whole sanctions file — see [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]] and [[Russia and Iran Oil Sanctions Waivers 2026]], where the same administration waived Russian-oil sanctions during a price spike five months earlier. **The timing sits oddly against the administration's Russia posture.** The law was signed on September 18. The day before, Anton Troianovski reported in the *New York Times* that Trump was arguing business deals with Russia, not pressure, would end the war; the *New Yorker* had published Dexter Filkins's account of privatized foreign policy four days earlier. A president who signs a sanctions statute while arguing publicly against sanctioning is not in contradiction if the statute's mandatory provisions are treated as discretionary — which is exactly what the next year will test. > [!warning] Unresolved > No designations under this Act had been announced as of September 21, 2026. Whether the mandatory-designation and tariff provisions are implemented, and on what schedule, is the fact that determines whether this page describes a policy or a gesture. ## See Also - [[Lindsey Graham]] — the author; died two months before enactment - [[Richard Blumenthal]] — the Democratic co-author - [[CAATSA]] — the 2017 precedent, and the model for the mandatory-designation structure - [[Secondary Sanctions]] · [[Dark Fleet]] · [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]] - [[Russia]] · [[Iran]] · [[Ukraine]] · [[Vladimir Putin]] - [[Russia and Iran Oil Sanctions Waivers 2026]] — the same administration going the other direction in March 2026