The U.S. State Department on Wednesday, June 5 renewed six-month waivers on Iran sanctions for China, India and seven other economies in exchange for their agreeing to reduce purchases of oil from Iran, Reuters said.

The waivers, which the State Department calls exceptions, mean that financial institutions in the consumer countries do not risk being cut off from the U.S. financial system for the next six months.

Sanctions are one of Washington's main strategies to choke funding to Iran's nuclear program, which Western countries suspect seeks to develop the ability to make weapons. Iran says the program is for peaceful purposes.

State Department and Treasury officials have pushed consumer countries to "significantly reduce" their purchases of Iranian oil without defining the volumes that they want to be cut.

U.S. and EU sanctions have cut Iran's oil exports by about half since they went into force last year, helping to cut the value of the rial, the country's currency, and pushing up inflation. This May the sanctions drove the Islamic Republic's crude exports to their lowest level in decades, according to industry sources and tanker tracking data.