U.S.: Six-month clock on Iran hasn’t started

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that the six-month interim agreement with Iran has not yet started.

The next step is “a continuation of technical discussions at a working level so that we can essentially tee up the implementation of the agreement,” she said.

It’s not clear when the agreement will come into force, but in the meantime Psaki said the United States is “respecting the spirit of the agreement in pressing for sanctions not to be put in place” and expects that the same is coming from Iran’s end.

However, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told Iran’s Parliament on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic would continue to build the Arak heavy water plant in contravention of the announced agreement. The previous day, Iran said that the United States had not distributed an accurate account of the agreement.