Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat, was Governor of Arkansas before he won The White House. He served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

On 5 August 1996 he signed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act into law, obliging the president to penalise foreign firms that put more than $20m into Iran's oil and gas industry. Within two years his own administration used the escape hatch the law contained. On 18 May 1998 it spared Total, Gazprom and Petronas, partners in a $2bn deal for Iran's South Pars gas field, after the European Union pledged closer cooperation on non-proliferation and counter-terrorism.

That decision is why Clinton's name returns in coverage of Russia sanctions. He showed that a president could shelve penalties Congress had made mandatory, with no fresh vote, and section 115 of the Graham Act hands Trump the same power. He used it on 16 October 2026 to waive the Act's Russia tariffs.