Before oil prices hit new highs and the polls predict he will lose both Houses in the November elections, Donald Trump may still want to salvage what he can.

He may declare victory and withdraw his troops, but what would happen afterwards in the Middle East?

On the Iranian side, the regime’s hardliners would conclude that their intransigence has, for the long term, shielded them from further foreign intervention. They would sideline the moderates, further intensify repression and increase the number of executions in order to eliminate several generations of opponents. Backed by China and Russia, Iran would become another North Korea, and its leaders’ priority would be to acquire the bomb to deter any external challenge.

Not only would the Iranians sink deeper into darkness, but on the other shore of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia would not remain passive. Faced with a hostile and virtually nuclear Shiite power, it too would acquire the bomb. Turkey would soon follow suit and, given Israel’s strike capability, the world’s most volatile region would quickly find itself home to four nuclear-armed powers.

The most confident would argue that such a level of deterrence would prevent any new war in the Middle East. Others would fear that this would spell the end of non-proliferation and herald an apocalypse in the Holy Land; but in any case, Iran’s territorial unity would be called into question by the regime’s hardening stance.

Led by the Kurds, ethnic and religious minorities – accounting for nearly half the population – would take a dim view of the central government’s attempts to tighten the screws on them even further. These populations in the border regions would conclude that the difficulties of the hardliners in simultaneously combating inflation, silencing the country and keeping the shelves stocked offer them an opportunity to secure their autonomy, or even their independence.

Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Israel would support these centrifugal movements. Fearing for their own unity, Turkey, Iraq and Syria would fight them, and everything suggests that even by claiming victory and sounding the retreat, Donald Trump will no longer be able to stem the regional chaos he has precipitated.

America has no choice. Now that it has started this war, it must attempt to create the conditions for stabilising Iran and, by extension, the entire Middle East.

This would not involve sending ground troops but rather beginning to think in political terms. It would not require further exhaustion but rather proposing to a regime whose arms stocks are not unlimited a ceasefire based on the release of imprisoned opponents, the return of exiles who so wish, the election of a Constituent Assembly and a general amnesty modelled on the South African example.

Until the theocracy accepted this proposal, America would continue to destroy the regime’s military and repressive capabilities whilst preserving Iran’s civilian, oil and gas infrastructure.

America would thus use military pressure to serve a clear and necessary objective: to give Iranians the opportunity to choose their own destiny by subjecting this regime to the verdict of freedom.

If America were to do this, it would foster a convergence between the democratic aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the population, the pragmatism of the regime’s most moderate figures, the various currents within the diaspora, and the desire of minorities to see their religious and cultural identities recognised. This would change the entire situation, and it would do so for the whole of the Middle East, if America were simultaneously to demand that Israel return to the two-state solution.

Donald Trump and his allies are obviously not there yet, but who knows? Necessity often ends up dictating the law, and in the meantime, there is nothing to prevent the European Union from laying the groundwork for a way out of this crisis.