Donald Trump’s critics fear he’s dragging the United States into yet another bloody war in the Middle East. The man who famously called for an end to “endless wars,” they say, is doing exactly the opposite.

But leave aside, for the moment, that horrifying prospect. We can’t know at this point whether there really will be another war. But we can already count the damage that Trump’s decision to order the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has done to U.S. and western interests in the region.

Iran’s government is stronger than ever. Just a few weeks ago it was facing the biggest protests since the Islamic revolution of 1979 from ordinary Iranians seeking relief from economic hardship and demanding social reforms and an opening to the outside world.

Now the hardliners are more firmly in control than ever. Iranians are rallying around the regime and uniting against the attack from Washington. Dissent is drowned out by a wave of nationalist feeling. Trump’s outrageous and illegal Twitter threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites if Iran attacks U.S. targets will just fuel that sentiment.

Iran has essentially abandoned an international agreement to limit its nuclear ambitions. It hasn’t officially renounced the 2015 deal with the U.S. and major European powers to put limits on its nuclear program. But it now says it will respect no limitations on production of enriched uranium.

That, of course, raises the prospect of Iran moving more quickly toward developing a nuclear weapon capability — exactly what the deal was meant to head off. Iran stuck to the agreement even after Trump withdrew the U.S. from it last year. But the killing of Soleimani has prompted Tehran to release the brakes on its nuclear program.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is under greater threat. Iraq’s parliament voted over the weekend to demand that its government expel all foreign troops, including the 5,300 American troops still in the country, as retaliation for violating Iraqi sovereignty by unleashing a drone attack on Soleimani at Baghdad airport.

The vote isn’t binding on the Iraqi government, but it certainly puts more pressure on the U.S. to leave Iraq entirely. And if Iraq does eventually order the Americans out, Trump is already making it clear it will be a bitter split. What a disaster if the U.S. ends up in open conflict with the same country that it spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to “save.”

The Islamic State may get a chance to regroup and revive. If U.S. forces, along with their Canadian and other foreign allies, are forced out, it could open the way for a resurgence by ISIS or like-minded groups. That’s what happened when the Americans last left the region in 2011.

The rift between Washington and its traditional allies is growing. Trump didn’t give any other leaders a heads-up about the attack on Soleimani, leaving them scrambling for answers from their own publics.

NATO, for example, had to suspend its Canadian-led military training mission in Iraq. The troops face the possibility of retaliatory action from Iran, plus increasing hostility from Iraqis toward all foreign troops. It’s not clear when it might resume.

All this is taking place within days of Soleimani’s death. At a stroke, Trump has managed to unite all Iranian factions against him, put Iran back on the road toward nuclear capability, alienate the United States’ major client state, and further distance Washington from its allies.

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And that’s leaving aside the still-lively possibility of actual war with Iran. If that does happen it will make a mockery of Trump’s past promises to extract the United States from those “endless wars” in the Middle East, what he once labelled “the worst decision ever made in the history of our country.”

Trump has unleashed forces he barely understands. Even if the worst doesn’t come to pass, it will be plenty bad enough.

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