The Trump administration's inter-agency review of policy towards Iran will examine whether the lifting of sanctions against Tehran is in the U.S. national security interests.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the United States should meet its own obligations agreed in a landmark nuclear deal in 2015 rather than raising accusations against the Islamic Republic.
He said the deal, brokered by former President Barack Obama's administration along with other world powers, represented the "same failed approach" the US has taken to North Korea.
He nevertheless added that the Donald Trump administration had "no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran".
He dismissed the agreement as a short-term effort to "buy off a power who has nuclear ambitions" that would backfire in the long term, the kind of approach that he said failed with Pyongyang.
Tillerson's tough stance on the Iran deal came a day after the Trump administration notified the Congress that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal reached in 2015 to limit the Islamic Republic's nuclear ability. The administration said it has extended the sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.
Trump has had harsh words for the Iran nuclear deal since his campaign, calling the deal "catastrophic - for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East" in a speech past year to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
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The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) does not achieve its goal of keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Wednesday.
Tillerson, during the press briefing, had also described Tehran as a "leading state sponsor of terror".
Meanwhile, US Vice President Mike Pence fired a warning shot at the hermit kingdom, saying: "North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region".
"An unchecked Iran has the potential to travel the same path as North Korea and to take the world along with it", Tillerson said on Wednesday, the BBC reported. Obama and others argued it was narrowly tailored to take the most unsafe prospect - a nuclear-armed Iran - off the table.
Iran, for its part, continues to deny it was ever trying to develop nuclear weapons. With some of those critics now in office, Tillerson's comments Wednesday marked the first time that position has been echoed by the USA government. But reimposing sanctions that were explicitly tied to Iran's nuclear program - as Tillerson suggested in his announcement - would face particular opposition from European allies and give the government in Tehran grounds to walk away from the accord. But neither Iran nor the other world powers that negotiated the agreement have any interest in reopening the deal, and US companies stand to lose billions if the deal is scuttled.
The Trump administration is now conducting a "comprehensive review" of Iran policy, he said. He had said in January 2016, after the deal was implemented, that "Iran will not get its hands on a nuclear bomb".
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