President Donald Trump has lost control of the war against Iran. If there was any doubt, that was dispelled on Sunday when the US State Department urged Americans across the Middle East to leave the region, or to prepare to leave at short notice, after both Trump and Iran rapidly escalated their threats.

Trump’s war with Iran has now metastasised into a conflict that is consuming the entire region. With drone strikes against two vessels in the Egyptian Mediterranean port of Damietta on Wednesday, Egypt now joins the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Iraq and Israel as targets of Iranian, or Iranian-aligned groups. Saudi and US aircraft have also bombed targets in Iraq, and Saudi Arabia has engaged targets in Yemen, while the Houthi movement threatens freedom of navigation in Bab al-Mandab, the southern transit point for the Red Sea.

It seems an eternity ago when Trump spoke of a still undisclosed “imminent threat” posed by Iran, that it would never possess a nuclear weapon, that the US would destroy Iran’s missiles and “raze its missile industry to the ground”, annihilate its navy and ensure terrorist proxies could no longer destabilise the region. He also called on the Iranian people to take over their government because America was backing them with “overwhelming strength and devastating force”. At the time, he stated that his administration had projected that the operation would take four to five weeks. We are now into the sixth month of a conflict with no obvious end point.

As with so much of what Trump says, his speech announcing the war was confusing and lacked coherence. It was a series of statements that revealed little understanding of the task he had set for the military – likely because he lacks an understanding of Iran. Commanders-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world have an obligation to their military but also to their own population to employ force sparingly and with a coherent and achievable purpose in mind. The use of violence must represent a means to an end – not an end in itself as Trump appears to employ it.

Which is why he finds himself in the position he is in. His speech to the nation left nobody the wiser as to why he went to war, nor what the strategic aims of the military operations were. When you initiate a war, you need to understand why you chose war and what you want to achieve as a result. As it stands, Trump’s actions will lead to a less stable Middle East, a more assertive Iran and a region that continues to appreciate US military power but has less and less confidence in Washington’s political leadership and reliability as a security partner.

The administration’s complete lack of any viable model of Iranian political transition following its assassination of much of Tehran’s senior political and military leadership speaks volumes about the lack of thought given to anything other than the White House’s crude metric of success – the number of targets prosecuted, aircraft destroyed, radars damaged or ships sunk. In the end these measures are largely irrelevant.

What matters most is the result of the military action. In the immediate term, no popular uprising resulted, hardly surprising when the population is under attack and more than 100 schoolchildren were killed on the first day in a US airstrike. In addition, the erasure of the cautious, incrementalism of the octogenarian Supreme Leader led to its replacement by an aggressive, strategically focused response by a cohort of battle-hardened Revolutionary Guard commanders and a younger and as-yet invisible new Supreme Leader.

While the US military destroyed Iran’s strategically irrelevant air force and navy, it never achieved Trump’s stated aim of destroying Iran’s missiles. They have proven to be Tehran’s most effective weapon. With many of the constraints previously imposed on their use now removed, Tehran has been willing to use them to inflict materiel and personnel losses on the Americans and Israelis, but also to focus on economic targets in the region and to block the Strait of Hormuz.

Along with supporting efforts by its proxies and allies in the region, Iran has shown the capability and the intent to inflict significant damage on regional energy infrastructure that would have global, as well as local ramifications. Tehran is increasingly seeking to seize the initiative against an administration who they do not trust and believe are operating to a political timeline that Iran isn’t. And Washington has fewer and fewer options to end this war of choice on its terms.

At one point in his speech announcing the start of the attack against Iran, Trump stated that “No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight”. He meant it as a sign of strength. In reality, it was a sign of his own hubris and a fundamental lack of understanding of the potential second order effects that such an action might unleash. Other presidents weren’t willing to do what Trump was because they and their advisers foresaw what is playing out now.

Dr Rodger Shanahan is an author and Middle East analyst.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.