treasury undersecretary stewart levy heads the department of terrorism and financial intelligence unit. he's been working for six years on designing and enforcing sanctions that hurt. >> they're having a dramatic impact. i think that the u.n. security council resolution was underestimated. it was underestimated by iran. it was underestimated by lots of people in the international community but there are provisions in the resolution particularly the financial provisions which say things like you can't provide any financial services, meaning banking, insurance, reinsurance, to iran if you have reason to believe that those services could-- and i underscore could-- assist iran's nuclear missile works. the implementation of those provisions of the security council resolution have been (no audio) of the security council resolution has been very powerful and i think has caught the iranians off guard and has been more powerful than people expected. >> warner: financing is is really at the heart of this. the access to the international financial system. >> it's one of the key pieces of it. and

treasury undersecretary stewart levy went into some detail about this in his csis speech yesterday. nevertheless, it is still early and no definitive conclusions can be drawn yet about the impact sanctions may have on iranian government decisionmaking. the obama administration appears serious about pursuing sanctions. secretary clinton has appointed, in fact i should say they are serious about pursuing sanctions. secretary clinton has appointed a talented policymaker, ambassador robert einhorn, to head the sanctions effort in the state department and he has already assembled an impressive staff. in fact was he -- yeah. so you know he's talented. undersecretary stewart levy continues his highly effective work in unmasking iranian individuals and financial institutions involved in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. and warning the rest of the world's financial institutions about them. earlier this month the treasury department designated for sanction the german bank e.i.h. which is one of the few remaining european banks actively facilitating business with iranian banks. treas