2026-07-27T04:00:25.514Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/27/politics/trump-iran-war-strikes-strait-of-hormuz-analysis
唐纳德·特朗普总统在伊朗问题上又来到了一个岔路口。但每一次走到这类节点，他的可选方案都会愈发有限，任何行动路线的代价也会随之升高。
特朗普政府周日解释称，空袭暂停（在连续13夜发动袭击后，目前已进入第三个暂停夜）旨在为外交斡旋留出空间。但同时它也警告称，美方“随时准备开火”，可能进一步升级局势。
目前有一些外交活动的迹象。伊朗方面表示，近日其与阿曼在副外长级别举行了会谈。但迄今为止，尚无迹象显示这个伊斯兰共和国会在其核心诉求上做出让步，而正是这一诉求引发了美伊之间最新一轮冲突：伊朗坚持要掌控霍尔木兹海峡的航运控制权。
特朗普发现自己再次陷入了熟悉的困境。他曾试图通过强化空袭迫使伊朗让步，但在首轮交火后，这一策略就已不再奏效，如今同样不见成效。他可以部署地面部队来加大施压，这一举措或许能利用美军的装备优势，但这会让美国在这场早已不受民众欢迎的战争中面临重大人员伤亡风险。
这场特朗普曾声称只需数周就能结束的战争已持续近五个月，他仍在试图为对德黑兰施压争取回旋空间。但所有战略似乎都只是让他的选择余地越来越小，处境愈发艰难。
与此同时，政治压力也在升级。上周油价上涨可能推高汽油成本，引发多数反对战争的美国民众的更多不安——不过作为国际原油基准的布伦特原油周日下跌了5%以上。一条经红海的替代石油运输航线，如今正受到也门亲伊朗胡塞武装的威胁。全球原油库存正接近临界低位，加剧了人们对能源危机恶化的担忧。而所有这一切都发生在11月即将到来的中期选举之前，特朗普所在的共和党本就面临艰难的选情。
正如过去几周的情况一样，特朗普的可选方案都难以下咽。这或许可以解释他上周为何反复无常，时而威胁动用大规模武力，时而又称伊朗乞求谈判。鉴于未能改变战争的地缘政治格局，这类言论似乎更多是针对美国国内受众，而非德黑兰。
特朗普仍有可能按照上周的强硬言论采取行动——在最新一轮袭击中，美军打击伊朗的目标范围已经扩大。他可以通过打击伊朗的交通基础设施和发电厂进一步扼杀其经济。但这种做法会让伊朗平民承受更多痛苦，而特朗普在战争伊始似乎曾表示希望帮助这些平民。而且即使是他核心圈子里的一些人也认为，这不会让德黑兰的专制统治者做出让步。
CNN记者扎卡里·科恩和吉姆·西图托报道称，副总统J·D·万斯和参谋长联席会议主席丹·凯恩在周五的白宫会议上对升级战争表示担忧。据一位知情消息人士和一名美国官员透露，凯恩担忧的是弹药储备受到的影响。上周，CNN记者凯蒂·博·利利斯报道称，据两位熟悉评估情况的美国官员透露，美国中央情报局和国防情报局近期均评估认为，美军最近实施的轰炸不太可能改变伊朗的谈判立场。
另一个方案是扩大美国对伊朗船只和港口的经济封锁，试图切断伊朗政府的资金来源以及维持伊斯兰革命卫队军事机器运转所需的收入。但弊端在于，这一举措需要数周甚至数月时间，而且仍有可能无法重塑德黑兰的想法。目前尚不清楚特朗普是否有足够的个人耐心，或者国内政治空间来选择这条道路。而伊朗可能会做出回应，恢复对海峡内商业油轮的袭击——从而加剧战争对全球经济的冲击，以及美国国内的政治压力。
第三个选项或许是，美国试图恢复已破裂的、曾达成短暂停火的谅解备忘录。但德黑兰不太可能同意，除非它能获得其当初认为该备忘录所提供的权益——规范并通过海峡航运获利的权利。这对美国来说将是一次失败，因为战争爆发前这条关键航道本就处于开放状态。与此同时，如果特朗普被视为给予德黑兰比最初谅解备忘录中更优惠的条件，他将面临美国外交政策鹰派的国内政治批评——最初的备忘录曾承诺解除制裁并提供区域重建基金。
似乎所有人都在寻找一种难以捉摸的新解决方案。
例如，共和党参议员比尔·卡西迪周日在《国情咨文》节目中表示，特朗普应该发起一场“全国性对话，让总统向美国人民、向国会阐明立场，由国会协助做出艰难决定。是否有其他前进道路？”他告诉CNN记者达纳·巴什，他希望找到一个既能不让伊朗掌控海峡，又不会让美国“在迄今未见成效的事情上花费数百亿美元”的解决方案。
“我们需要不同的方案，”卡西迪说。
但这恰恰体现了特朗普的困境：在开战五个月后，没有人能提出一个可行的“不同方案”。
白宫将解释政府不断变化的战略、寻求战争出路的任务交给了美国驻联合国大使迈克·沃尔茨，让他在周日的脱口秀节目中进行说明。
沃尔茨强调了近期美国在中东的军事部署，这加剧了人们对特朗普可能加大打击力度的预期。“政权应该相信总统的话：‘我们随时准备开火’，所有选项都摆在桌面上，”他在哥伦比亚广播公司的《面向全国》节目中表示。
在全国广播公司的《与媒体见面》节目中，沃尔茨辩称“伊朗在外交上被孤立、经济上被封锁、军事上被摧毁”。他补充道：“他们从未如此虚弱，我们正以实力地位进行谈判。”
从军事角度来看，这或许属实。但这场冲突的不对称性质意味着，只要伊朗能够用无人机和导弹威胁海峡内的船只，它就有能力提高战争给全球带来的代价。而且尽管最高领袖阿里·哈梅内伊已去世，伊朗专制政权仍得以存续，这给人一种对抗美国全球超级大国的实力印象。
与此同时，对伊朗的战争继续成为特朗普政府的政治负担。哥伦比亚广播公司新闻/YouGov的一项最新民调反映出总统在冲突问题上混乱的信息传递：仅有31%的美国人表示他们清楚霍尔木兹海峡的局势。仅有40%的人认为美国在冲突中占据优势。76%的人表示，与伊朗的战争比特朗普政府预期的更加艰难。
但沃尔茨坚称，特朗普阻止伊朗获得核武器的核心目标将被历史铭记。“有时候，这会比——你知道，比最初计划的更加艰难，”他告诉全国广播公司。
数月来，特朗普一直试图迫使伊朗投降，同时又不让美国陷入他在竞选活动中抨击的那种中东地面战争。但经验表明，在美军行动的自我限制范围内，这场战争或许无法取胜。再往升级阶梯上迈一步，可能只会让特朗普再次陷入同样令人羡慕的困境。但目前并没有显而易见的和平路径能够实现美国的目标。
这似乎就是无解之局的定义。
At every fork in the road on Iran, Trump’s choices get worse
2026-07-27T04:00:25.514Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/27/politics/trump-iran-war-strikes-strait-of-hormuz-analysis
President Donald Trump has arrived at yet another fork in the road on Iran. But each time he reaches such a point, his options only become more narrow and the costs of any course of action grow.
The Trump administration explained Sunday that a pause in air strikes — now in its third night, after 13 straight nights of attacks — was meant to create space for diplomacy. But it also warned it was “locked and loaded” for another possible escalation.
There are some signs of diplomatic activity. Iran said it hosted talks with Oman at deputy foreign minister level in recent days. But there’s so far no sign the Islamic Republic will shift on its core demand, which caused the latest flare-up with the US: its insistence on controlling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump finds himself back in a familiar spot. He’s tried to coerce Iranian concessions with intensified attacks. But this plan is not working any better now that it did after the initial round of fighting. He could increase the pressure by deploying ground troops, a move that might take advantage of the US military edge. But this would risk significant US casualties in an already deeply unpopular war.
Nearly five months into a war he’d said would take a few weeks, Trump keeps trying to create maneuvering space against Tehran. But all the strategy seems to do is leave him with less room and worse choices.
And the political heat is rising. A jump in oil prices last week creates the likelihood of higher gasoline costs and more angst for the majority of Americans who oppose the war — although Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell more than 5% Sunday. An alternative oil shipping route through the Red Sea is now being threatened by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Global crude inventories are approaching critically low levels, stoking fears of a worsening energy crisis. All of this is unfolding ahead of the fast approaching midterm elections in November in which Trump’s Republicans already face a tough ride.
As has been the case for weeks, Trump’s options appear unpalatable. This may explain his gyration last week between threats of huge force and claims that Iran is begging to talk. Given the failure to shift the geopolitics of the war, such rhetoric seems aimed more toward domestic audiences than Tehran.
Trump could still choose to act on his blistering rhetoric last week, following a broadening geographic scope of targets in Iran during the latest bout of attacks. He could try to further strangle the Iranian economy by striking transport infrastructure and power plants. But such an approach would heap even more pain on Iranian civilians, whom Trump seemed keen to help at the start of the war. And even some in his inner circle doing think it would not move Tehran’s repressive rulers.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen and Jim Sciutto reported that Vice President JD Vance and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine voiced concern about escalating the war in a White House meeting Friday. Caine was worried about the impact on munitions stockpiles, a source familiar with the matter and a US official said. Last week, CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis reported that both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency recently assessed that the kind of bombing the US most recently carried out is unlikely to shift the Iranian negotiating position, according to two US officials familiar with the assessments.
One other plan would be to extend the US economic blockade on Iran’s ships and ports to try to choke off funding for the Iranian government and revenues needed to sustain the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military machine. The downside is that it would take weeks or months and still might not reshape Tehran’s thinking. It’s not clear that Trump has the personal patience or the domestic political room to pick such a path. And Iran would likely respond by renewing attacks on commercial tankers in the strait — thereby heightening the shock waves of the war on the global economy and the political pressure in the US.
A third option might see the US to try to renew the collapsed memorandum of understanding that forged a short-lived ceasefire. But Tehran is unlikely to agree unless it secures what it believed the MOU provided to begin with — the right to regulate and monetize strait traffic. This would represent a defeat for the US, since the critical waterway was open before the war. Trump would face domestic political criticism from foreign policy hawks, meanwhile, if he were seen to give Tehran even more favorable terms than those in the initial MOU, which brought the promise of sanctions relief and a regional reconstruction fund.
Everyone seems to be casting around for an elusive new approach.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, for instance, said on “State of the Union” Sunday that Trump should initiate a “national dialogue, where the president comes to the American people, comes to Congress, Congress helps make a tough decision. Is there another way forward?” He told CNN’s Dana Bash that he hoped for a solution that doesn’t give Iran the ability to control the strait and does not involving the US spending “tens of billions of dollars on something which so far has not proven results.”
“We need something different,” Cassidy said.
But it’s a mark of Trump’s conundrum that after five months of war, no one has come up with a workable suggestion for what something different might look like.
The White House handed US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz the task of explaining the administration’s shifting strategy and search for a way out of the war on Sunday talk shows.
Waltz highlighted a recent buildup of military force in the Middle East that fueled expectations Trump might try to intensify the fight. “The regime should believe the president when he says, ‘(We’re) locked and loaded,’ and where all options are on the table,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Waltz argued that “Iran is diplomatically isolated, economically isolated and militarily devastated.” He added: “They’ve never been so weak, and we’re negotiating from a position of strength.”
In military terms, this may be true. But the asymmetric nature of the conflict means that as long as Iran can threaten ships with drones and missiles in the strait, it has the capacity to increase the global costs of the war. And the survival of its repressive regime despite the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei creates a perception of strength against the US global superpower.
The war in Iran meanwhile continues to be a political anvil for the Trump administration. A new CBS News/YouGov poll reflects the president’s chaotic messaging on the conflict, with only 31% of Americans saying they had a clear understanding of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Only 40% said the US had the advantage in the conflict. And 76% said the war with Iran had been harder than the Trump administration expected.
But Waltz insisted that the president’s core goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon would be recognized by history. “Sometimes, that’s going to be harder than — you know, harder than initially planned for,” he told NBC.
For months, Trump has sought to force Iranian capitulation without embroiling the United States in the kind of Middle East ground wars that he decried on the campaign trail. But experience is showing that the war may not be winnable within the self-imposed limits on US action. Another step up the ladder of escalation may simply deliver Trump back to the same unenviable dilemma. But there’s no obvious path to a peace deal that fulfills US goals.
It seems like the definition of a no-win situation.