CNN:
Samantha Vinograd is a CNN national security analyst. She served on President Barack Obama's National Security Council from 2009 to 2013 and at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush.
Trump hasn't just sown mistrust of the intelligence community -- he's also sown mistrust of American reliability.
If the administration can overcome the challenges that Trump has created, the difficult job of figuring out how to hold Iran accountable for what the administration says they did -- without escalating the situation further -- will be the immediate task at hand. Here too, however, Trump's own record of sowing mistrust will make his team's jobs more difficult.
Once an intelligence assessment is agreed upon, policy experts typically try to punish bad behavior and deter more of it going forward. Any US efforts are bolstered if we can get other countries to work with us. We often try to build coalitions of countries to do things like issue sanctions or even move more of their own military resources. We do this because multilateral efforts send a stronger symbol of resolve, and benefit from greater resources.
In this case, for example, we could try to encourage other countries to mirror US sanctions which prohibit things like purchasing Iranian oil and also target Iran's export revenues from metals and petrochemical exports.
But because of Trump's own track record of wielding big sticks when it personally suits him, and then putting them down based on his mood that day, we are no longer viewed as a trustworthy partner. Since assuming office, Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty -- just to name a few.
In other words, the cost-benefit analysis of supporting US foreign policy initiatives is far more complex. Countries may question whether working with the United States is a lot of pain and no gain. And consider this: we asked our allies to work with us on the Iran deal. They did, and then we withdrew from it -- so getting them on board with more coordinated action on Iran will be more difficult.
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