Friday, January 20, 2006  U.S. Aims to Avoid Angering Iran's
Public  Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times: As Western
governments debate how to punish Iran for its nuclear
activities, Bush administration and European officials said
Thursday that they wanted to avoid causing hardship or more
anti-Western resentment in the Iranian public. READ MORE  The
officials said that sanctions were not in the offing anytime
soon, and they had ruled out any early steps toward an oil
embargo or other sorts of sweeping economic punishments that
would not only be opposed in Europe but would also cause
internal suffering in Iran.  Iran's leverage over the West
because of its oil exports and trade agreements are a fact of
life that American and European officials said made sanctions in
that area impractical. But these officials also argue the
importance of not alienating Iranians who might support the
West, causing them to rally around their leaders.  "A heavy-
handed sanctions approach is going to hurt an awful lot of
Iranians