By Matt Spetalnick and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) - One week into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that has plunged the Middle East into turmoil, President Donald Trump faces a growing list of risks and challenges that raise questions about whether he will be able to translate military successes into a clear geopolitical win.

Even after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and devastating blows against Iranian forces on land, at sea and in the air, the crisis has quickly widened into a regional conflict that threatens a more prolonged U.S. ‌military engagement with fallout beyond Trump’s control.

That is a scenario that Trump had avoided in his two terms in the White House, preferring swift, limited operations like the January 3 lightning raid in Venezuela and June’s one-off strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.

“Iran is a messy and potentially protracted military campaign,” ‌said Laura Blumenfeld of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington. “Trump is risking the global economy, regional stability and his own Republican Party's performance in the U.S. midterm elections.”

Trump, who came to office promising to keep the U.S. out of "stupid” military interventions, is now pursuing what many experts see as an open-ended war of choice unprompted by any imminent threat to the U.S. from Iran, despite ​claims to the contrary by the president and his aides.

In doing so, analysts say he has struggled to articulate a detailed set of objectives or a clear endgame for Operation Epic Fury, the biggest U.S. military operation since the 2003 Iraq invasion, offering shifting rationales for the war and definitions of what would constitute victory.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected that assessment, saying Trump has clearly outlined his goals to "destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and production capacity, demolish their navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and prevent them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

However, if the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs of interrupted Gulf oil flows multiply, Trump’s biggest foreign policy gamble could also hurt his Republican Party politically.

Despite criticism from some Trump supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his Make America Great Again movement have largely backed him on Iran so far.

Source: Drudge Report