But a question was put to Levey at the news conference: why not make Iran’s choice suddenly and unmistakably, rather than “increasingly,” clear? Why not body-slam an economy that is beholden to the IRGC and mullahs, an economy tied into Iran’s military and nuclear program in myriad ways? Levey walked reporters through the decision to designate the latest in a series of Iranian banks—the total is up to 16 now—called the Post Bank of Iran. After the previously designated bank, Bank Sepah, was sanctioned in January 2007 for providing financial services to Iran’s missile industry, Post Bank stepped in to take up many of Sepah’s international transactions. But Levey conceded that Washington hadn’t needed any new U.N. resolution to designate Post Bank—and that indeed there was no action taken under Resolution 1929 that couldn’t have been adopted under the previous resolution from 2007, 1747. Now it’s a question of awaiting the next Iranian bank to fill Post Bank’s role.

When asked about the administration’s incrementalism, Levey talked of the need to develop “evidence” against specific companies and to maintain international “legitimacy”—in other words, consensus among the major sanctioning nations, especially Russia, China, and Europe. But what’s the use of working for months to gain consensus if you’re not going to use it to make a real difference? Experts and Iranians themselves continue to indicate that any new round of incremental sanctions is not going to be enough to change the national debate. As S.M.H. Adeli, Iran’s former ambassador to London, told me when I visited Iran in 2007, America’s confrontational approach to Iran “has already gone on for three decades, and it hasn’t worked. Why should it work now?” U.N. sanctions are shrugged off by most Iranians as a cost of doing business, adding about 6 percent to prices in general.