What comes next with the conflict in Iran

Five months into the conflict with Iran, American forces are still taking fire and gas prices remain high. So what is the long-term strategy here? Fox 13 political editor Craig Patrick breaks down the tough choices facing the White House in tonight's round of Money, Power & Politics. Well, President Trump has a problem with Iran and no clear way through. Fox News chief political analyst Brad Hume pretty well summed it up. You know, he promised to keep us out of endless wars or Unsatisfactory wars And now he's in one and it's not all clear how it's gonna end. When Trump first announced the US-led attack in February He tied it to regime change as he urged the Iranian people to revolt. Take over your government It will be yours to take. There was no revolt. The attacks killed Iran's supreme leader But his son officially took over as throngs of Iranians cheered, perhaps out of fear, and the radical hardline government remains. Can you articulate what was behind that move that was so important for the US to go into Iran? Yeah, so easy. The easiest question you've asked me so far. They can't have nuclear weapons. They have nuclear. Well, the regime says it will not give up the right to enrich uranium and President Trump has sent mixed signals on the roughly 900 pounds of enriched uranium Buried under mountain rubble following US bombing campaigns. The USA will get all nuclear dust He's described it as a threat that must and will be excavated We need the biggest excavators you can imagine, but we're gonna go in together with Iran. We're gonna get it We're gonna take it back home to the USA very soon And he also downplayed the need to excavate even saying there is no reason to. We could get it right now I don't think they could stop us if we wanted, but there's no reason to. It's in two. You use a good word It's in two. Meanwhile, Iran, of course, still has weapons and is using them to kill American troops and Iran's proxy fighters are still going Including the Houthis who now threaten shipping in the Red Sea as Iran continues to threaten oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz And at this point that may be the biggest difference over the past five months There was free and open shipping before the u.s. Led attack now some five months later. There is not and gas prices remain much higher than they were So what happens next and where can we go from here? Well this week I sat down with retired Colonel EJ Otero He's a former Republican nominee for Congress and former director of Intel operations at US Central Command Here now are his thoughts on the conflict. It's very short. We've only been doing it For a few months a handful of months, but the administration said it would only be a few weeks. Yes, because as always The civilians win over how the military does things we the military does with the civilians tell and if diplomacy is a route that the civilian world wants to go that's the way you go and you Stand out, but we don't seem to be necessarily going that way we're kind of bouncing back and forth correct correct It's a it's it's a new way of doing things in your mind. What should the plan be there has to be a commitment of? What would the objective be stick with the first objective that we have right now, which is? Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. How do you do that? You have to make a well thought-out process of what happens to the regime Which we don't talk about how specifically be a stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon Well, if you were to have a regime change and say so that one of the objectives for this to work Is that after 47 years this government needs to go from the outside looking in how do you ask the regime? Do you have to put ground troops in place? That certainly would be a way But that's not what the people want. How specifically could we do that short of ground troops? You could decapitate There's a way that you can do it. Didn't we just do that though? and it's still a handful of people a Handful so so if you eliminate the top and then you eliminate the second level and you eliminate the third level So there's still going to be folks down here that are directing attacks and opinions and Taking actions without asking from a peer just because they are devoted to the RGC philosophy Wait a minute. There's the analogy of turtles to sometimes use who's to say it wouldn't be turtles all the way down Yeah, you would think that I think well, then how could continued strikes change the regime? Well depends on where the strikes are you could decide that you're gonna hit Individually like we did at the beginning the Israelis were hitting the people the leadership is the United States willing to go now after the leadership and You know the mission that Israel used to have that we go after the leadership It's it's a very difficult decision But you have to consult because they have shown Iran has shown their Willingness to attack neighbors and it goes beyond that because they're also Asserting control of the Strait of Hormuz. How do you stop that from happening? That's a commitment of targets of targeting the thing now We're gonna go we've targeted an awful lot at this point and we're not any further along Well, correct the 25% that was left over when the ceasefire started we have to go back to that 25% Destroy everything that could take years. No another 25% We already have list of what is it that we did not destroy when the ceasefire started well destroy everything that could include drones Which would be mighty hard to take out when they can continue to cheaply build more and more and more they can But you can stop that you can find out where they are and we have been actually very effective in intercepting them So why don't we do this? I don't know Well on that note, we don't know but we do know that targeting Iranian weapons manufacturing or leadership to take them out carries more risk particularly to our regional allies and would take more time and in an unpopular conflict time works against a president politically and that leaves the White House caught between military options and strategies that require patience and a political reality that demands results