Signal No. 119 · Graham's Act, Europe in Scope

The Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on Friday, 86 votes to 11, sixteen months after its introduction. The bill is named for its sponsor, who died on 11 July, days after announcing that he and Donald Trump had finally agreed to move it; his sister Darline Graham, appointed to his South Carolina seat, read out the tally. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote no, and the amendment he sponsored with Democrat Ron Wyden to strip the bill's tariff powers was rejected before passage — the authority at the centre of the bill survived its one direct challenge. It carries the expanded Iran sanctions Trump sought alongside the Russia measures.

The act carries two instruments. The first is conventional: sanctions on Russian officials and entities. The second is a tariff authority whose ceiling was cut from 500 to 100 per cent to gather votes (Signal No. 111): the president may impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries that are major consumers of Russian energy — and lift them at his discretion. Its backers state the limits precisely: the five largest importers of Russian crude oil or gas, and the top five countries aiding Russia's evasion of energy sanctions. Reuters again names India, Japan and some European Union member states among the consumers in scope. "These tariffs have one purpose, to make it more costly for countries to keep buying the Russian energy to fund Putin's war," Senator Jeanne Shaheen said before the vote. Volodymyr Zelensky, who watched an early procedural vote last week: "It's also a big signal to Europe, big signal to Ukraine, big support of our people."

The bill is not law. The House takes it up as soon as next month, after its five-week August recess, and the lines are drawn unusually: Trump — whose resistance had kept the bill unscheduled for over a year — now supports it, per Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Speaker Mike Johnson says the House is "happy to receive and process" it, while the named objections come from Democrats: Representatives Gregory Meeks and Don Beyer call the current text unacceptable over the breadth of the tariff authorities and waivers it hands the president. Reuters adds Republican wariness that new tariff powers could raise costs for American importers and consumers.

Goodwin, the 143-year-old Stoke-on-Trent engineer, said on Friday its board had begun a strategic review that includes the possible sale of "a substantial part" of its mechanical engineering division — hours after the FT reported that several buyout firms with defence records had submitted expressions of interest in recent weeks. The company, half-owned by the founding family, advised by Rothschild and valued around GBP 1.4 billion, casts and machines components for the Royal Navy's Astute and Dreadnought submarines and for the US Navy's Virginia- and Columbia-class boats and the Gerald R. Ford-class carrier; defence is 57 per cent of a GBP 287 million order book, and the group signed a collaboration agreement with Northrop Grumman last year. Shares rose as much as 17.8 per cent on the report. "There can be no certainty that a transaction will be entered into," the company said; the FT notes any buyer would face British and American national-security scrutiny given where the components sit.

The sale would extend the sequence Signal No. 96 opened five weeks ago, when Renk signed for David Brown Defence — gearboxes across the Type 26 family — and Lockheed Martin emerged as frontrunner for sonobuoy maker Ultra Maritime, a purchase confirmed at USD 3.45 billion three days later (Signal No. 97). Dealogic's count has global defence deal value above USD 40 billion this year, on track to pass 2019's full-year record of USD 59 billion, with maritime assets over-represented.

The Bundeswehr's plan was an initial buy of about twelve deep-strike drones — "Jagdbomberdrohnen" in the Luftwaffe's own term, for strikes to 1,800 kilometres — in service before the end of the decade, and Rheinmetall's team with Boeing Australia had positioned the MQ-28 Ghost Bat for exactly that order. Handelsblatt reports the first buy may now be cancelled outright, after differences between the procurement office and the defence ministry, in favour of an open competition followed directly by a larger order. The field it describes: Rheinmetall-Boeing, Airbus with Kratos's XQ-58A Valkyrie while its own Ravenstorm is dated to the 2030s, Helsing with a test model — and, per Handelsblatt's information, General Atomics, whose FQ-42A first flew in 2025, received a US Air Force serial-production order in June, and could take final assembly and payload integration at General Atomics Aero Tec Systems in Bavaria. The competitors' stated fear is that a first MQ-28 buy would settle the choice through use before any competition ran; Helsing's aviation chief has argued the Ghost Bat is an air-to-air design where the Bundeswehr needs air-to-ground.

Rheinmetall's answer is a schedule. "Germany can save itself a great deal of development time and money by joining the Australian programme as a partner nation," said Tim Paul, who runs the company's aviation business — Australia has put three billion euros into the MQ-28's development, and the type flew in the US military's Valiant Shield exercise in June. "Otherwise, comparable platforms are unlikely to reach the Luftwaffe before 2035." To the sovereignty objection Paul offered guarantees: the Australian government and Boeing Australia, he said, guarantee Germany "absolute sovereignty" over the MQ-28's system architecture, software and platform, with mission planning in Bundeswehr hands. Boeing Australia's programme head Glen Ferguson set the other end of the same argument: a 2029 capability requires tactics, training and force-structure work to begin today. Industry observers' named bridge for the gap is the Tomahawk buy Berlin says it will make, after Washington cancelled the missiles' planned stationing — an intention, not yet an order.