Shortly after the US and Israel began their illegal assault on Iran, with the US president still preening himself over the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro the previous month, a state department official joked that Donald Trump had a new foreign policy credo: “Decapitate and delegate”. It was a reversal of Colin Powell’s invocation of the “Pottery Barn rule” ahead of the invasion of Iraq: you break it, you own it.

Gen Powell, then secretary of state, was warning that wars can escalate beyond expectation and are harder to exit than enter. It remains unclear what precisely the Trump administration expected from this conflict – perhaps not least to the White House itself – but it is certain that the president was not paying heed when people described the likely consequences.

On Wednesday, a reckless war saw another dramatic escalation when Israel bombed the South Pars gasfield, which Iran shares with Qatar. Mr Trump denied that the US knew about the plan. His own officials disagree, and Israeli sources say that the US helped to coordinate the attack. Reportedly, Washington hoped it would put pressure on Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz; instead, and predictably, it has further intensified the conflict.

A battered Iran is seeking to restore deterrence. It retaliated with more strikes across the region, causing significant damage to a Qatari facility that normally supplies a fifth of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG). It now threatens “zero restraint” if its infrastructure is attacked again. The effects are being felt across Asia and Europe. QatarEnergy said that it might have to excuse itself from long-term contract obligations to Italy and Belgium, as well as South Korea and China – warning that it could take up to five years to fully restore production. European leaders, already angry at the US’s lifting of sanctions on Russian oil, now face rocketing gas prices too.

But American allies in the region are the most exposed and are increasingly vocal in their fury. Dr Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, an adviser to Qatar’s prime minister, described the Israeli targeting of facilities as “dangerous and irresponsible”. Regional powers were already angry at Iranian attacks on energy assets, but the Israeli strike and Iranian response are of a different magnitude. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, has called the conflict a “catastrophe” and warned that the Trump administration has “lost control of its own foreign policy”.

As the political scientist Prof Nathan Brown has noted, it appears that Israel’s strategy is no longer to use war to produce a stable political arrangement – war “is becoming, instead, the arrangement itself”. But others in the region need stability and security. Their political as well as economic systems rest on energy wealth and the ability to export it. As angry as they are to bear the brunt of Iranian retaliation for a war not of their making, they do not want to be drawn into the conflict – and don’t trust the US not to abandon them. Gulf states provided flattery, diplomatic credit, deals with the Trump family and a $400m jet. This is their reward.

Mr Trump has made it amply clear that he only cares about the consequences of this war in so far as they are likely to register in November’s midterm elections. But in the longer run, the US too will live with the consequences.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.