The adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy emphasises that perverse results can be expected from actions that are not carefully thought through. And so it is that US President Donald Trump’s reckless war with Iran has produced outcomes worse than the status quo ante. Almost no American war aims have been achieved. Regime change is now less likely than before and may even have been set back decades due to the attacks on Iran having entrenched hardliners. No agreement is in place on restraining Iran’s nuclear programme, the June 14th memorandum of understanding (MoU) — now suspended as military action continues — merely a promise to talk about the nuclear programme.No restraints have been imposed on Iran’s support for armed regional proxies, through which it meddles in the ethnic and religious politics of neighbouring states.This is an impressive record of failure. But there are equally significant new developments that did not exist before and are solely of Trump’s creation. Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz through simple, asymmetrical military technology and is insisting that a shipping lane closest to its shores be used versus an American one nearer the Gulf Arab side. Iran will not give up this leverage, and there doesn’t seem to be anything the US can do about it. Despite bringing the full weight of its military power to bear upon Iran in daily strikes since last week it is unable to guarantee safe passage to shipping.This could continue for some time. Iran has demonstrated resistance, absorbing the best punches the US and Israel could throw, and is still standing, able to hide much of its missile launchers, attack drones and mosquito fleet of small boats it uses to strike American military targets in the region. Iran has a remarkably high pain threshold and will not be brought to negotiations by force, making it likely that this dangerous period of escalation and tit-for-tat strikes will continue indefinitely. It will not stop until there is unambiguous agreement between the two sides over what exactly the MoU, or a successor agreement, means.Worse is the decline of American credibility in the Middle East. This is particularly so for the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, which have traditionally relied on American guarantees for their security. Instead it has dragged them into a war with Iran they did not want and that the US military cannot protect them from.Iran has a remarkably high pain threshold and will not be brought to negotiations by force, making it likely that this dangerous period of escalation and tit-for-tat strikes will continue indefinitely. America is still the most powerful outside actor in the Middle East, but an opening has been created for others, including China, to exert more influence. For Iran, whose explicit goals are to end the American presence in the Middle East, this is a long-wished-for gift.What is happening inside Iran is equally significant. A stronger, more capable regime is emerging. The decapitation strategy followed by the US and Israel succeeded in removing the top echelons of leadership in Iran’s government and key state institutions, including the most senior figures in government, the military, intelligence, security and policing, as well as the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).However, this merely created a vacuum that was filled by lower level personnel, having the cumulative effect of a generational succession. These new leaders have been labelled “ultrahardliners”, but this is only partly true. The new generation are more motivated by Iran’s own national interests than ideological goals, though they share the basic tenants of the regime as an Islamic fundamentalist state with a divine mission in the world. A more technocratic, managerial state elite is emerging that may be more effective and powerful. These changes will alter how the Iranian government manages national security, relations in the region and connections to its own citizens.Foreign policy goals are also changing. The present leadership has given up on any prospect of sanctions relief and reintegration into the Western-dominated global financial network. The effect of sanctions as leverage has therefore been spent. The regime now looks past that to alternative financial networks and trade outside the dollar area, which it has been doing since sanctions were reimposed during the first Trump administration in 2018.Outside force has had perverse results in other ways too. The “maximum pressure” sanctions strategy of the first Trump administration shrank the middle class in Iran and raised the rate of poverty. In this environment the IRGC and other hardline groups increased their influence among the poor and undermined the regime’s reformers, who had put faith in diplomacy and came up short.The regime has been reradicalised by war with the US and Israel. This taps into nationalist sentiment that is part of a continuity in Iranian history and identity: resistance to invasion and meddling from outside powers. This is combined with Shia religious narratives about sacred defence of the religion and the motherland and an existential fight to preserve the values of the Islamic republic. After many years of regime atrophy and public boredom with self-justifying state propaganda, these developments have shifted the national dialogue onto terrain the regime is more enthusiastic about. The Iranian opposition and public who had hoped for something better ― a majority of the population ― have been left exposed and disappointed.What comes next is unclear. A cycle of escalation and counterescalation is under way. Iran may overplay its hand and trigger a wider war. With the US midterm elections looming, at some point Trump could declare victory and stop. Yet the underlying conditions that sustain conflict will remain. These may be papered over, with Iran accepting some concessions as part of a tactical deal while it re-arms and prepares itself for the next cycle of violence.Retribution is almost certain. Iran’s brand of revolutionary Shia Islam emphasises vengeance and martyrdom. This may involve terrorist acts in Europe, the US and the Middle East. Iranian intelligence and the IRGC have already been implicated in seven attacks in the UK on the Jewish community and Iranian dissidents in the past year, with many other such attacks disrupted there as well as in Europe and the US. All that is preventing more of the same is a lack of capability given the disruption to Iranian intelligence, not a lack of will.Considering this record of unintended consequences it is worth recalling former US president Barack Obama’s foreign policy doctrine — don’t do stupid stuff.• Mason, an associate of Johannesburg-based risk and resiliency consultancy Eunomix, lives in Rosendal, Free State, but is periodically on assignment in war zones.