Mr. Khamenei, the most prominent individual targeted in the latest sanctions, for example, never travels outside Iran and the conglomerate he controls, Setad, has little reliance on international banking. The new sanctions, which prohibit him from entering the United States or doing business with American financial institutions, will have almost no impact on the ayatollah.

The same appears to be true for most of the other individuals sanctioned on Monday. Several are senior officers of the Republican Guard. The Trump administration in April designated the guard as a terrorist organization, and that prohibited them from entering the United States or doing business with Americans.

Yet the gesture may still come at a cost. Under the Iranian political system, Mr. Khamenei’s personal assent is required to open any talks with the United States, and the new sanctions are unlikely to win him over. What is more, in addition to being Iran’s paramount political leader, Mr. Khamenei is revered by some Iranians as a singular spiritual authority as well, and those Iranians may also be offended.

The sanctions on Mr. Khamenei and other top officials were a “clear violation of Iran’s sovereignty and against international norms,” Abbasali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman of the Guardian Council, the powerful body that supervises the work of elected officials, said on Twitter.

Most startling to Iranians was Mr. Trump’s order to add sanctions that target Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Mr. Zarif was educated in the United States and within the Iranian political system he is considered a moderate — the kind of figure hard-liners might seek to cast out and previous American administrations had sought to cultivate. As foreign minister, he would also be the main conduit for any negotiations with Tehran.

Both reformers and hard-liners said on Monday that the order to sanction Mr. Zarif severely undermined Mr. Trump’s repeated assertions he is seeking to reopen talks with Iran about a revised deal to limit its nuclear weapons program.