Don’t be distracted by Donald Trump’s increasingly gymnastic contortions over his Iran war which he alternately declared over just the past week “already won” yet requiring $200 billion in additional funding and the now subject of “very good and productive talks regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.”

Just ask yourself this: Is President Trump achieving his stated political objectives for the war?

If the answer is no, ask yourself a second question: Can the nation accomplish those objectives at a cost in blood, treasure and new strategic vulnerabilities elsewhere (for example, deterring China or containing Russia) that would make “victory” against Tehran worth it?

If the answer is still no, then the United States is losing—or has lost—the war.

That is the upshot of one of the maxims associated with any conflict. As the Prussian officer and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously put it, “War is simply the continuation of politics by other means.” (Note that some translation cite “policy” rather than “politics.”)

For his part, Trump proclaimed 10 days ago the Iran conflict will be over when “I feel it in my bones.” But we don’t need an X-ray of his skeleton to determine the success or failure of President Trump’s Iranian “excursion.” He already gave us the scorecard to use, one with three unambiguous objectives:

1. Liberate the Iranian people.

2. Topple the regime of the Islamic Republic.

3. Permanently prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

1. Liberate the Iranian People

On January 13, Trump took to social media to urge Iranians to “keep protesting” and “take over your institutions” because “help is on the way.” Six weeks later, President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people as he announced the start of U.S.-Israeli military action. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he proclaimed, adding, “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

2. Topple the Regime In Tehran

“It will be yours to take,” Trump also promised Iranians, because “our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” That same day, the President told the Washington Post that all he wanted was “freedom for the people” of Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concurred, announcing that the objective of the attack was “to remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran.” But as the war entered its fourth week, even the Israelis who championed the war to fuel rebellion in Tehran are souring on the success of their decapitation campaign. Nevertheless, Trump on Monday proclaimed his mystery talks with the Iranians would produce a “very serious form of regime change.”

3. Permanently Prevent Iran from Building Nuclear Weapons

Trump now finds himself trapped in a nuclear mess of his own making.

Decades of American war games and simulations warned that the U.S. could only permanently destroy Tehran nuclear program through a massive invasion larger than either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Israeli strikes alone might set the program back two years, while a larger American campaign of bombardment could delay it by perhaps four years. That’s why President Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was so crucial. Under its terms, Tehran dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges and shipped 97% of its enriched uranium out of the country, all of it under the watchful eyes of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But by unilaterally scrapping the deal in 2018 that his own administration and even Israeli intelligence confirmed Iran was complying with, Trump guaranteed that any future American president—including himself—would either have to negotiate a new deal, go to war to annihilate Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure once and for all, or accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Now, 9 months after repeatedly boasting joint American-Israeli strikes had “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, Donald Trump finds himself back at square one. Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium went from just 300 kg (3.67%) before Trump shredded the JCPOA to almost 10,000 kg now, with an estimated 441 kilograms enriched to close-to-weapons grade 60%. Deploying U.S. ground troops to capture Iran’s nuclear sites and then remove whatever of the radioactive material which has not already been dispersed by the regime would be prohibitively difficult in the best of circumstances. Doing so under fire is essentially impossible. The result, as all that war-gaming predicted, is that “major issues” with Iran’s nuclear program will remain after the war Trump has claimed “we’ve already won.”

If you’re keeping score at home, that makes Donald Trump 0 for 3 so far in achieving his Iran war aims.

That raises the question of whether victory as Trump has defined is even possible and, if so, at what cost. To be sure, his insistence that the United States both needs and doesn’t need NATO help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz in a war America already “militarily won” is ridiculous on its face. To achieve Trump’s three war objectives, the United States could redirect its forces away higher priority security challenges posed by China and Russia. Trump could institute a military draft and increase taxes to fund the expansion of the American military needed to defeat Iran while not compromising our posture relative to Beijing and Moscow. (As it is, the U.S. is already moving vital assets needed to defend South Korea and prevent a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan.) But that staggering investment raises another of von Clausewitz’s maxims from his treatise, “On War.” In a nutshell, war must not demand more than the political object is worth:

“The value of the political object will determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration.”

Put another way:

“The political object… will thus determine both the military objective to be reached and the amount of effort it requires.”

Facing the dual needs to deter and defeat potential Chinese aggression in the Pacific and halting Russian expansionism in eastern Europe, the United States simply cannot afford the price it would need to pay to accomplish the objectives President Trump has set for the nation. And that means Trump has violated another of the Prussian’s principles:

“No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”

That’s why Donald Trump is on a path to lose his Iranian war of choice. It’s bad enough that the campaign’s targeted assassinations of foreign leaders and strikes against vital civilian infrastructure are likely violations of international law. The conflict—undeclared, unfunded and open-ended—has already seen 13 American servicemen and women killed and another 230 wounded. Trump has strained our alliances and needlessly disrupted the global economy.  All of which means, in the words often attributed to the French diplomat Talleyrand, “it was worse than a crime; it was a mistake.”