Editor's Note: In our latest Facebook Live interview (please like our Facebook page to see more of these events) Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, sat down with Dimitri Alexander Simes, a reporter-intern at the National Interest, to discuss the Trump administration, the GOP and sanctions.

Dimitri recently wrote an article about the Republican push for more sanctions on Russia. An excerpt of the article can be found below:

On the question of removing sanctions against Russia, President Donald Trump faces just as much resistance from Congressional Republicans as he does from their Democratic counterparts. To make matters more difficult for him, his traditional opponents in the party are not the only ones dissenting on this issue. Some legislators generally supportive of Trump have also moved to block him from discontinuing sanctions.

Even before Trump took office at the start of this year, Congress took concrete steps to consolidate and expand sanctions against Russia. On January 10th, Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and John McCain (R-AZ) announced the Counteracting Russian Hostilities Act. The legislation outlined a series of additional punitive measures, including new sanctions over a wide array of issues ranging from cybersecurity, Ukraine, and Syria. Furthermore, it sought to legislate President Obama’s executive sanctions. Thus, Congress sought to preempt any possible future initiative by the President-elect to engage in a new détente.

When members of Trump’s team considered easing sanctions early in his presidency, they were quickly rebuffed. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the administration requested the State Department to explore easing sanctions along with other means for improving relations with Russia. This provoked consternation amongst some State Department staffers, many of whom helped design the sanctions in question under President Obama. In an effort to derail this attempt at rapprochement, these officials reached out to like-minded individuals in the House and Senate. Prompted to action by the prospect of Trump lifting sanctions, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Russian Sanctions Review Act on February 8th. Modeled after the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, the bill proposed to limit Trump’s ability to remove Russia sanctions by requiring him to submit any plan to adjust the sanctions regiment for Congress’s review and approval.

Up until now, these bills made little progress in the House and the Senate. However, that may soon change. After initially opposing additional sanctions before the Senate Intelligence Committee finished up its investigation into the Russian interference in the election, Senator Bob Corker declared on May 25th that unless Secretary of State Tillerson could demonstrate that Russia’s recent actions in Syria have become less objectionable, additional sanctions against Russia would be forthcoming. In response to an inquiry from The National Interest, a congressional source confirmed that while the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair wants to give the Trump administration a to chance engage diplomatically with Russia before imposing new sanctions, “he is willing to move ahead with substantive and appropriately-calibrated sanctions in coming weeks if he does not judge that adequate forward progress is being made.” With such an important voice in the Senate potentially joining the effort, the campaign for further sanctions may gain tremendous momentum in the near future.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Bjoertvedt.