Dana Allin, Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs at the International International for Strategic Studies (IISS), made his remarks at the end of a month which has seen Mr Trump lash out at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, threatening him with “severe consequences”, as well as an incident in which a Saudi oil tanker was attacked by Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen.
Mr Trump’s remarks were apparently triggered by a speech by Mr Rouhani in which he told the US not to “pull the tiger’s tail”, adding that a conflict with Iran would be “the mother of all wars”.
For his part, Mr Rouhani was irked at US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s characterisation of his regime as a “mafia” and implicit support for anti-government protests, with the US Government making no secret of its wish to see a popular revolt in the Middle Eastern country.
Additionally, Iran is furious at Mr Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the JPCA agreement aimed at preventing Iran developing nuclear weapons which was agreed during the administration of predecessor Barack Obama.
He said: “I think there is obviously a potential for escalatory incidents leading to a military conflict – it’s fraught with risk.
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“Even if regime change happens there is nothing in our experience which would suggest what follows would be better – this is what happened in Iraq.”
Meanwhile, the invasion of Iran would be “unhinged” and a “disaster unparalleled in US history”, Mr Allin said.
Branding Mr Trump’s strategy “incoherent and highly counter-productive”, Mr Allin suggested that the JPCA decision was motivated by a desire to destroy one of Mr Obama’s policy achievements.
He added: “Now people are trying to imagine creating a strategy around these destructive impulses.
“He can cause Iran a lot of pain but not the kind of pain which Obama was able to engineer as a result of the very impressive coalition he put together.
“He can also punish EU allies with secondary sanctions for trading with Iran, and the EU is relatively powerless to fight back against that.
“But a large part of the planet is not going to be coerced to following the US lead here.
“China and India for example are going to continue to import Iranian oil no matter what.
“Recreating the coalition against Iran is going to be impossible.”
Mr Allin also suggested that far from leading to the toppling of Mr Rouhani’s regime by moderate forces sympathetic to the US, it was more likely that hardliners within Iran would seize control of the agenda.
He said: “Trump’s not stupid – he has a savvy understanding of media for example – but his approach here is divorced from reality.”
Mr Allin envisaged two possible scenarios which could arise from Mr Trump’s current, belligerent stance.
He said: “The first is that Iran continues to abide by the JPCA deal, trying to ride out the Trump administration – but Trump’s not going anywhere soon.
“The second is that there is a political dispute in Iran leading to a movement to restart its nuclear programme.
“The Israelis along with the Saudis might be motivate to take military action at which point the US would get involved.”