Hopes for a resolution to the Iran war appeared to fade Monday as President Trump declared the latest ceasefire proposal from the Islamist regime “totally unacceptable” and that prospects for a future ceasefire were on “massive life support.” Still, the president promised that rising energy prices would not pressure him to end the conflict, remarking, “We’re going to have a complete victory.”

The latest proposal put forward by Iran reportedly sought “a withdrawal of American forces from Iran, removal of sanctions on Iranian assets, reparations payments, an end to fighting in Lebanon and a new method to govern the Strait of Hormuz,” among other demands. Trump later called the proposal a “piece of garbage.”

As for next steps, White House aides say that the president is considering restarting major combat operations in an effort to force Tehran to agree to abandon their nuclear program. Trump’s national security team met Monday to discuss next steps, but sources say that no major decisions are likely to be made before the president heads to China for a summit with Xi Jinping on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a growing number of experts say that any declared victory will likely come at a high cost for the U.S. “We’re in a situation where the only options left are a lot of bad options,” Allison Minor, a former U.S. official on Middle East policy, told The Wall Street Journal. She further noted that if the U.S. wants to end the crisis swiftly, it will likely have to dilute its key goals. “The Trump administration is going to be forced to choose,” Minor added.

Experts like National Review Editor in Chief Rich Lowry say that foes like the Iranian regime cannot be dealt with in the transactional way that Trump prefers since “the Islamic Republic is not fundamentally transactional; it is a profoundly serious ideological project grounded in Shia Islam.”

Dr. David Wurmser, a senior analyst for Middle East Policy at The Center for Security Policy, agrees.

“[T]he Iranian regime is not a normal regime,” he observed during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday. “We have to understand it’s a bit like a parasite to a host. They look at Iran as a stepping stone or as a vehicle for their ideological pursuit of global Islamic conquest and so forth. So they’re not really all that sensitive to some of the pain that the Iranian people themselves feel. So we have a regime that simply is not going to compromise, and that’s what we’re seeing. They’re just rearranging the terms of their counteroffer.”

Wurmser continued, “Iran is very good at essentially giving you just enough so that you think, ‘Okay, we got a little bit, let’s keep going. Maybe there’s a little more, maybe a little more.’ And it’s never there. They will never come to the right place, but they will always give you just enough to [whet] your appetite. So that is their negotiating strategy. And the other negotiating strategy is, while all that’s happening, is to write the narrative that … they’re powerful, that they have all the cards. And as a result, it’s only inevitable that the United States has to give in, that the United States doesn’t have the will to restart the war … and America is done as a superpower. … So their strategy … goes back 47 years. Delay and change the narrative surrounding what they’re facing.”

The involvement of other countries in the region is adding further layers to the standoff. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United Arab Emirates carried out secret strikes against Iran in April in retaliation for extensive missile and drone attacks that Tehran launched against the UAE in March, including 550 missiles and 2,200 drones. Meanwhile, Pakistan reportedly allowed Iran to use its airfields to park the Islamist regime’s military aircraft in order to shield them from U.S. strikes, even as the Asian country acted as a mediator between Washington and Tehran.

As to what next steps the Trump administration should take amid an increasingly complicated conflict, Wurmser advised a multi-pronged strategy.

“My advice would be [to] continue with negotiations [to] make it clear to everybody you’re doing every last thing you can to try to avoid a war, because in the West, we don’t choose wars. We usually only go to war when it’s an absolute necessity,” he contended. “… I would [also] begin to arm the Iranian opposition. I would begin to respond to the Iranian violations of the ceasefire by hitting the Iranians — not tit for tat — but in places that really hurt, for example, hitting their IRGC concentrations checkpoints. I would let the Israelis also do that.”

“And moreover,” Wurmser elaborated, “I would eventually … start hitting the regime where it really hurts to strip it of its oil facilities. They need gas to run their suppressive mechanisms … And they if we start taking out some of these structures, hopefully in ways that don’t permanently damage Iran’s long term economic prospects, if we can essentially begin to hit them where it hurts and put this pressure on the regime that leads these killers … to start fighting among themselves, then that gives the Iranian people a shot at taking over.”

Wurmser further emphasized that the Trump administration must increase the pressure on Iran’s allies to cease aiding the Islamist regime’s military.

“[W]e have to … look at China and Russia and the external support they’re giving Iran, and they’re probably sending weaponry right now,” he surmised. “I would be afraid of them sending weapons [like] anti-aircraft MANPADs, which we did have a problem with. … So I would imagine that there are imports from China right now through Pakistan, the border areas. And I would also, by the way, seal the border areas — violently if necessary — with Pakistan, with Turkmenistan, with Turkey … and with Iraq, and that way isolate Iran. But most importantly, stop these weapons from flowing in. That could be gamechangers if the war restarts.”