India can work its own way through Iran nuke deal: US

Asserting that the Iran nuclear deal has an "international architecture", the US has said its sanctions against Tehran will stay in place for the time being but it was up to India to decide on its own future course of action in the wake of the deal.

"Each nation has, obviously, sovereign rights to impose sanctions on their own. The unilateral US sanctions against Iran's nefarious activities will remain in place, and we'll continually review those as we go forward," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters yesterday.

Asked about how long would the sanctions that obliged India to cut down its oil imports from Tehran would continue, Kirby said, "It wouldn't be appropriate for us to tell India how to work their way through this, but we do believe that the architecture of the Iran deal is truly an international architecture. This was many countries coming together to try to make sure that Iran never possess a nuclear weapon, and the deal does that."

With the Republican-dominated US Congress failing to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, he said the US would soon turn the task to implementation of the accord.

"The sanctions that we're talking about as part of the Iran deal are UN sanctions that were always meant to drive Iran to the negotiating table. So they worked in that regard," Kirby said.

"There's no new sanctions relief under the JCPOA until Iran has completed the necessary steps that it needs to complete with the IAEA to verify the status of their nuclear programme and that it's peaceful," he asserted.

Meanwhile, the Republican-majority US House of Representatives rejected President Barack Obama's nuclear accord with Iran, in a symbolic vote that would have no impact on the implementation of the deal.

Taking a different approach from the Senate, where Democrats on Thursday paved the way for the nuclear deal to move forward by scuttling a disapproval resolution, the House instead voted on a resolution to approve the agreement.