Iran nuclear sanctions could focus on regime's leaders

WASHINGTON — With Iran's crackdown on protesters intensifying, the Obama administration and allied governments are rethinking their approach to planned sanctions on Tehran in hopes of focusing the punishments more tightly on the regime leadership, U.S. officials say.

U.S. and allied officials have been in discussions for months about how to impose economic penalties on the regime to discourage it from continuing with a uranium enrichment program. But officials are concerned that broad sanctions that harm ordinary Iranians would appear harsh to the outside world.

The discussions are aimed at the making sanctions "as narrow as they can be," said a senior State Department official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic discussions.

He said he believed the new approach would rule out an international embargo on selling gasoline to Iran, which is a major crude oil producer but has such limited refining capacity.

Cutting off gasoline shipments has support in Congress, but the administration and U.S. allies are likely to resist such an embargo because it would have far-reaching effects on the country.

Some analysts have warned that the regime's crackdown would make it much more difficult for the United States to negotiate a deal with Tehran over its nuclear program, because any agreement reached with the regime would lack acceptance in the United States or abroad.

But the senior official said the administration has come to the view that the Iranian government has turned its back on a deal in any case.