Lobbying the Lawmakers: India's Waiver Play on the Russia Sanctions Act

THE LAW IS A LOADED WEAPON, AND THE TRIGGER IS STILL IN PLAY

The most important word in the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act is not "100%". It is up to. The SRIA, passed by the US Congress on September 16, creates a mechanism under which Washington can impose tariffs of up to 100% on imports from countries that keep buying Russian energy.

It does not impose them automatically. A determination on India is expected next month, with a 30-day deadline pending and a waiver available under certain conditions. What this is really about is the space between the power and its use and India's diplomacy this week was aimed squarely at that space.

The interest map - India wants three things at once:

affordable crude, since it imports over 88% of its oil and Russia supplies nearly half of that; protection for its exports from a tariff shock; and an expanding technology partnership with the US that it cannot afford to put at risk.

• The US executive wants leverage over Russia's oil revenue, but it also wants India as a partner in semiconductors, critical minerals and the Indo-Pacific. Rubio told Jaishankar that sanctions could be levelled against countries trading with Russia and Iran, but that the US would help its partners with energy security. That is a threat and a door in the same sentence.
• Congress is not one actor. Brian Mast has backed secondary sanctions aimed at China and India and has criticised China's military supplies to Russia. Shri Thanedar, also in the delegation, voted against the Bill and was one of five Indian-American lawmakers who opposed it, largely over the powers it gives the President.

Why lobby lawmakers if the President decides?

Because a discretionary sanction is decided politically, not mechanically. The executive will make its determination with an eye on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers who wrote the law can press for maximum use or accept a waiver and a delegation that has sat in the Foreign Secretary's home and heard India's case is part of that climate.

Misri met a delegation that included the Bill's co-sponsor and two supporters who voted for it. That is legislative diplomacy: making India's energy arithmetic visible to the people whose opinions will shape the executive's choice.

The parallel India has walked before Under CAATSA, enacted in 2017, India's purchase of the Russian S-400 system raised the same question and India was not sanctioned, while Turkey was sanctioned in 2020 over its own S-400 purchase. The lesson India draws is that the US weighs its partners' value when it uses discretionary sanctions. The difference now is scale: crude oil is not a single arms deal but a daily flow that keeps India's economy running.

Where the

balance sits The design of the SRIA favours negotiation over automatic punishment and India's leverage is the breadth of the partnership. On Friday alone, Misri discussed critical and emerging technologies, semiconductors and critical minerals with one Under Secretary and civil nuclear cooperation and the Indian Ocean Strategic Venture with another.

Every new strand raises the cost to Washington of a 100% tariff. For the exam, the insight is that strategic autonomy is not the absence of pressure but the capacity to make pressure expensive for the one applying it.