India has ended Iran oil imports

India has ended all imports of oil from Iran, its ambassador in Washington said, becoming the latest country to grudgingly comply with threatened US sanctions.

India had already sharply decreased its imports from Iran and bought one million tonnes of crude in April, the last month before Washington ended all exemptions to sanctions, Ambassador Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “That’s it. After that we haven’t imported any,” Shringla told reporters during a briefing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election victory.

Shringla said that energyhungry India has also ended all imports from Venezuela because it considered itself a partner of the United States — but said the shift had caused pain at home, with Iran formerly supplying 10 per cent of India’s oil needs.