Describing the Iran nuclear deal as “truly an international architecture”, the United States has said that India on its own can work its way through the landmark accord and decide how to deal with the sanctions issue.
“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,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“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,” Kirby said, answering questions on the sanctions regime that led to India and several other countries cutting down their oil imports from Iran.
Kirby expected US implementation of the Iran deal to move forward in the wake of the happenings in the Congress this week.
Although the House of Representatives rejected the deal, Democrats in the Senate successfully blocked the Republican-sponsored disapproval resolution, thus handing President Barack Obama a major foreign policy victory.
The US has repeatedly said that while sanctions to force Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons will be lifted with implementation of the deal, other sanctions
unilaterally imposed by it on Tehran for aiding and abetting terrorism will continue.
“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,” Kirby said.
“There’s no new sanctions relief under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action 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 said.
On Capitol Hill, the Republican-dominated House pushed through its disapproval (247-186) in what was purely a symbolic move, given that the Senate had effectively killed the Republican resolution a day earlier through the filibuster mechanism.