Iran Loses BILLIONS as US Sanctions STRANGLE Regime

Welcome to a special edition of Saturday in America. I'm Mollye Lyne. Kayleigh McEnany is off today. We begin with a Fox News alert. The war in Iran continues with no clear end in sight. Vice President J.D. Vance on what comes next. We're not going to set an artificial timeline because, let's just say hypothetically, let's say I told you three months. Let's say I told you three days, okay? And then the Iranians start blowing up oil and gas ships, and the United States is the only country with the capability to ensure that those oil and gas ships get to market. Well, what I would say is it would be irresponsible for us to write out our strategy and our timeline for an Iranian nation that simply cannot honor its commitments and cannot stop shooting at commercial ships. This as the U.S. continues to launch fresh attacks on Iran, striking three oil tankers this morning in response to Iran targeting U.S. naval warships. So where does the conflict all go from here? Joining me now, retired Air Force Brigadier General John Teichert. Thank you so much, sir, for bringing us your insight this morning. I want to get your thoughts there on what the vice president said about there being no artificial timeline and where things go from here. Your thoughts. Molly, it's pretty clear that President Trump has settled into the idea that this strategy is the right one to cause the regime either to capitulate or to crumble. But there's two downsides to that strategy. And the first one is that there's no evident way where we can know what the timeline would be before we achieve our objectives, which means it could be months and not weeks to see success. And related to that is number two, in that there is an opportunity cost for the U.S. military because during the execution of this strategy, we need to maintain those 50,000 brave Americans in the area of responsibility in order to enforce the blockade and escort friendly ships filled with oil and to make sure we're defended well. And so the one downside of this strategy the president has settled on is related to the timeline that now is nebulous, as the vice president said. When we talk about the timeline, there are a lot of people that would like clarity on that. They'd like to have some ideas specifically as to when the situation in Iran wraps up. But in reality, we're dealing with a regime that had been in power for many, many decades. And where do they go from here? The president has not quite cryptically, but has called on the Iranian people. You know, where are they to raise up? That was never the goal specifically of getting into Iran. That was about ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear device that can threaten the globe, threaten Israel, all of our allies around the region. But your thoughts on the political possibilities that may also extend the timeline. Molly, first of all, huge credit to President Trump for 14 months ago, executing Operation Midnight Hammer, which effectively destroyed Iran's nuclear program. But now we're settling into this strategy. It is about isolating and containing Iran until either they capitulate, unlikely, or there is a mechanism for someone or some entity to rise up to overthrow the regime. And otherwise, because like you said, we've seen 47 years of malign activity by Iran. Unless the regime is gone, we can never quite know that our interests are going to be safe in the region and around the world. And so by strangling the economically, we're hoping for one of those mechanisms of regime change to take place, while we also acknowledge that we took care of their nuclear program 14 months ago. We've seen them striking back. There was a month-long lull in strikes both ways. And now we're seeing, you know, an uptick, so to say. So in the coming weeks, they're also going once again after many of our allies in the region, Jordan, Kuwait, taking hits. You know, but they don't have the same power that they did months ago. And will that become even more obvious, not only to the regime, but also to the allies in the region in these coming weeks? Mollye, one of the greatest things that we did with our military instrument of power during the six weeks of active combat operations was not just to destroy Iran's current military, but to destroy their military-related industrial capacity so that they couldn't resurrect their capability. And we're starting to see, no doubt, that Iran is limited in their ability to strike. We haven't driven the threat to zero, but we certainly are seeing that Iran is far less potent in projecting power than they were six months ago. And just circling back, you mentioned it, the economic strangulation of Iran's economy and the devastation there. The Europeans have come on board very publicly, but they still have their allies. They still have countries that are willing to help with them. You know, how do you finish the job on an economic aspect of warfare? Mollye, two things. Number one, continue to enforce the ironclad blockade that eliminates $9 billion of income that the regime would otherwise receive. And then number two, I am eager to hear specifics about what sanctions and secondary sanctions we are implementing since the Secretary of the Treasury's announcement a week and a half ago. And I think that we need to make sure that we are diligent in following through with the threats we made 10 days ago or so. Otherwise, we won't be able to strangle the regime and we won't see the quicker results we would hope for with them either capitulating or crumbling because of the economic pressure. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had said, we will not stop until every remaining financial lifeline has been severed. So echoing your thoughts there, General John Tykert, thank you very much. Really appreciate your insights today.