WASHINGTON — After two recent Iranian ballistic missile tests made clear that Tehran had no intention of obeying a United Nations prohibition on such launches, Obama administration officials on Wednesday handed Congress a draft list of fresh sanctions they are preparing against Tehran — to be imposed even as separate nuclear-related sanctions are lifted in coming weeks.

The new sanctions are designed, administration officials say, to make clear that the United States remains committed to containing Iran’s regional ambitions, which have so rattled its Arab neighbors. But they are also intended as a carefully calibrated answer to critics, from Capitol Hill to Saudi Arabia, who have argued in recent months that President Obama is willing to overlook almost any Iranian transgression in order to avoid derailing the nuclear deal he pursued for so many years.

There is now almost no doubt that the nuclear accord will go into effect. But the past few days have been full of sobering reminders that the grander objective of that deal — some gradual steps toward an era of wary cooperation, or at least a cessation of hostilities between Washington and Tehran — remains a long way away.

Just last week, the Republican-led Congress inserted new rules into the budget signed by Mr. Obama that were clearly intended to discourage foreigners from doing business with Tehran. Then on Saturday, the Iranian Navy harassed an American aircraft carrier and a French frigate in the Strait of Hormuz, launching rockets that passed within 1,500 yards of the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman. It seemed an act somewhere between recklessness and outright aggression.