2026-08-04T04:01:25.435Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/04/politics/trump-iran-war-strait-of-hormuz
除非唐纳德·特朗普能在伊朗问题上跳出固有思维，否则历史可能会将他发动战争的选择视为定义其总统任期的重大错误。
但迄今为止，他还避免了一个潜在的致命错误：将冲突大幅升级至超出其可控范围。
历史表明，那些为寻求出路、或是为维护自身声望或美国声誉而扩大战争规模的总统，都会滑向一条不归路。在越南、伊拉克和阿富汗，他们往往是不情愿地卷入战争，而这些战争早已无法取胜。
如今这场战争的走向由伊朗拒绝投降或认真谈判所主导，特朗普再次站在了一个三叉路口。
- 如果外交持续失败，他是否愿意长期延续这场迄今未有定论的行动：空袭、脆弱的停火协议，以及美伊双方持续不断却未能终结战争的海上封锁？
- 或是他会打破自身限制，升级美国的攻势，将打击范围从主要军事目标扩大至伊朗民用和基础设施资产——跨过战争红线，有限动用地面部队？
- 第三种选择将极为痛苦：承认他本人和美国的最佳选择是止损，在核心目标尚未达成的情况下脱离这场冲突。
每个选项都带来了令人难以接受的政治和战略后果，这也解释了为何他仍深陷这场“赢不起、也输不起”的战争。据CNN的一篇独家报道，五角大楼已向一批军事分析师征集新的惩罚伊朗方案，这正是美国当前困境的体现。
周一，伊朗回绝了特朗普的最新提议，他的挫败感在Truth Social账号上显露无遗。此前他曾多次表示协议即将达成，并在周末暂停了原定的毁灭性空袭。
“伊朗领导层无耻至极！”特朗普写道，这竟讽刺地呼应了这个压迫性伊斯兰共和国对其胁迫外交的抱怨。当天下午，特朗普再次发出威胁。“这是他们签署一份良好协议的最后机会，”他在椭圆形办公室说道。
但他发出的伊朗将面临“斩首打击”的警告，本身就引出了新的问题：如果伊朗再次无视他，他会怎么做？
特朗普任何大规模升级行动都将是一场赌博，因为目前没有迹象表明轰炸能迫使伊朗回到谈判桌前。
伊朗可能会以袭击美国海湾盟友境内的同类目标作为对本国桥梁、发电厂和其他基础设施遭袭的回应，进一步推高战争的经济代价。地区领导人似乎已在周末向特朗普提出了这一潜在场景。“我们原本准备出击。然后他们打来了电话。除此之外，沙特、阿联酋和卡塔尔也都打来了，”特朗普说道。
理论上，特朗普可以动用美国海军强行开放霍尔木兹海峡。但这将使美国军舰暴露在导弹和无人机的威胁之下。针对哈尔克岛石油出口枢纽的地面行动，或是将伊朗军队从海峡击退的行动，都可能造成惨重伤亡。
过去60年的历史表明，当空战演变为地面战时，战争风险会呈指数级上升。国内民众对战争的看法也会发生变化。随着伤亡人数增加，政治成本不断上升，而特朗普正处于中期选举前的关键节点，根本承受不起这种代价。当士兵为寻求脱身策略而阵亡时，他们的牺牲反而可能会延长战争——因为这些牺牲绝不能被视为徒劳。
此前多位总统都曾面临与特朗普类似的转折点。尽管越南、伊拉克、阿富汗以及特朗普如今的伊朗冲突的起因各不相同，但它们最终都演变成了“维持糟糕现状、升级战争或是撤军”的两难抉择。
没有哪位总统希望因输掉一场战争而被载入史册。
林登·约翰逊与布什如何滑向不归路
1965年，时任总统林登·B·约翰逊正纠结于是否扩大他从遇刺总统约翰·F·肯尼迪手中接手的越南战争。“我们已经开始轰炸这些人了；我们已经跨过了那道坎，”约翰逊对国防部长罗伯特·麦克纳马拉说道，这番话在一定程度上呼应了特朗普如今的战略选择。“我不认为任何事会比输掉战争更糟糕。而且我看不到任何获胜的途径，”约翰逊说道。
但约翰逊还是下令实施了“滚雷行动”，升级了对北越的轰炸，并向这片炼狱增派了数万名年轻美国人。他本该听从国务院副国务卿乔治·鲍尔的建议。鲍尔在一份未注明日期的备忘录中写道，一旦美国遭遇伤亡，就会陷入“几乎无法逆转的进程”，如果不能达成目标就撤军，美国将遭受“国家耻辱”。
鲍尔预言了即将降临的灾难，他认为，继续这场战争对美国全球领导力的损害，将大于“精心规划的妥协解决方案”。
这场战争终结了约翰逊连任的希望，理查德·尼克松在1968年大选获胜后接手了越南战争。许多历史学家认为，尼克松和国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格早已认定胜利无望，但他们仍继续作战，希望能为撤军创造有利条件——徒劳地试图扶持反共的南越政权，避免美国出现战败的印象。
“当关键时刻到来时，世界上最强大的国家美利坚合众国如果表现得像一个可怜、无助的巨人，极权主义和无政府主义势力就会威胁全世界的自由国家和自由制度，”尼克松在1970年4月30日向全国发表讲话时如此解释他将战争扩大到柬埔寨的决定。尼克松任期内，超过2万名美国人在越南阵亡。1973年，最后一批美国作战部队撤离越南；1975年西贡陷落时，最后一批美国人员在杰拉尔德·福特总统任内撤离。
30多年后，乔治·W·布什总统也发表了类似的战时全国讲话。2007年，他承认了所犯的错误，但警告称“在伊拉克的失败将是美国的灾难”。他宣布增派数千名美军，协助伊拉克武装部队打击叛乱分子。
历史尚未对这场行动给出最终定论。反叛乱行动在部分地区取得了成效。但由于美国最终完全撤军，美军伤亡是否值得这一问题始终令人痛苦不已。
贝拉克·奥巴马总统以结束美国无休止战争的承诺当选。但在导致美国卷入阿富汗的9·11袭击事件发生八年后，他宣布增兵以扭转塔利班的攻势，最终击溃基地组织。考虑到约翰逊、尼克松和布什都陷入了升级陷阱，他承诺将于2011年年中开始撤军。批评人士认为，这一有限的撤军时间表鼓励了美国的敌人等待美国撤离。
美国近代的战争泥潭塑造了特朗普的激烈批评，这也帮助他在2016年赢得白宫宝座。在当选总统四天前，他曾猛烈抨击“那些永远不会结束、我们永远赢不了的战争”。
但在第一任期内，特朗普下令增兵阿富汗，以期最终结束战争。“我最初的本能是撤军——从历史来看，我喜欢遵循自己的本能，”他说道。不到三年后，他将此归咎于他的第一任国防部长詹姆斯·马蒂斯，称“我曾给他增派了一批部队，只是短期部署，但结果并不理想”。
如今，特朗普再次面临他在2017年阿富汗全国讲话中概括的那种孤独的反思：“我这辈子总听人说，当你坐在椭圆形办公室的办公桌后时，做出的决定会完全不同。”
这场伊朗战争不是布什的战争，而是特朗普自己的战争。它将决定他的政治遗产，以及白宫之外无数生命的命运。
One mistake Trump hasn’t made on Iran
2026-08-04T04:01:25.435Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/04/politics/trump-iran-war-strait-of-hormuz
Unless Donald Trump finds a way out of his box on Iran, history may come to regard his choice to wage war as a presidency-defining error.
But he has so far avoided one potential dire mistake: massively escalating the conflict past his capacity to control it.
History shows that presidents who intensify wars in pursuit of a way out, or to protect their own prestige or America’s reputation, descend a slippery slope. In Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, they often did so reluctantly, in wars that could no longer be won.
Not for the first time, Trump finds himself at a three-way intersection in a war now being driven by Iran’s refusal to surrender or seriously negotiate.
- If diplomacy keeps failing, is he willing to perpetually extendthe so-far inconclusive campaign of air strikes, fragile ceasefires, and US and Iranian maritime blockades that rumbles on but doesn’t end the war?
- Or does he step up the US offensive by lifting his own limits and going beyond mostly military targets to take out Iranian civilian and infrastructure assets — crossing the Rubicon into the use of ground troops in limited operations?
- The third option would be deeply painful: accepting that he, and the United States, would be best served by cutting losses and walking away from the conflict with his major goals unresolved.
Each question serves up unpalatable political and strategic answers, which explains why he’s still stuck in a war he can’t afford to win and can’t afford to lose. It’s a measure of the US predicament that the Pentagon sent a request to a group of military analysts for new ideas on how to punish Iran, according to an exclusive CNN report.
Trump’s frustration radiated from his Truth Social account Monday after Iran rebuffed his latest gambit. He’d suspended promised devastating strikes at the weekend after saying for the umpteenth time that a deal could be imminent.
“Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” Trump declared, ironically echoing complaints of the repressive Islamic Republic about his coercive diplomacy. By the afternoon, Trump was back to threats. “This is a last chance for them to sign a good document,” he said in the Oval Office.
But his warning that Iran would face “decapitation” begged its own question. What will he do if it ignores him again?
Any huge escalation by Trump would be a gamble, since there is no sign Tehran can be bombed back to talks.
Iran would likely respond to attacks on its bridges, power plants and other infrastructure by torching similar targets on the territory of US Gulf allies and deepening the war’s economic cost. Regional leaders seemed to have raised this very scenario with Trump over the weekend. “We were set to go. And they called. And in addition, Saudi Arabia called. And UAE called. Qatar called,” Trump said.
In theory, Trump could use the US Navy to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz. But this would expose US ships to missiles and drones. Ground operations against the Kharg Island oil exporting hub or to push Iranian forces back from the strait could be bloody.
The last 60 years show how stakes rise exponentially when an air war turns into a ground war. The conflict looks different to Americans back home. Political costs increase as casualties rise, which Trump can’t afford weeks before the midterm elections. And when troops die in the search for an exit strategy, their sacrifices can paradoxically extend a war, because those sacrifices cannot appear to have been in vain.
Many previous presidents have reached turning points like Trump’s. While Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Trump’s Iran conflicts started in different ways, they were all reduced to a “bad status quo, escalate or leave” equation.
And no president wants to be remembered for losing a war.
How LBJ and Bush went down slippery slopes
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson wrestled with extending the Vietnam War he inherited from assassinated President John F. Kennedy. “We are off to bombing these people; we are over that hurdle,” LBJ told his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in a remark that partially parallels Trump’s strategic choice. “I don’t think anything is going to be as bad as losing. And I don’t see any way of winning,” Johnson said.
But Johnson still ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, escalated bombing against North Vietnam and sent tens of thousands more young Americans into the inferno. He should have listened to Under Secretary of State George Ball, who wrote in an undated memo that once the US suffered casualties it would be stuck in a “well-nigh irreversible process” and would suffer “national humiliation” if it stopped short of achieving its objectives.
Ball, who predicted the abyss to come, argued the US would more seriously damage its global leadership by continuing the war than by adopting “a carefully plotted course toward a compromise solution.”
The war ended Johnson’s hopes of a second elected term, and Richard Nixon inherited the Vietnam War after winning the 1968 election. Many historians argue that he and national security adviser Henry Kissinger had already concluded that victory was impossible but that they fought on in the hope of defining conditions for a withdrawal — a futile attempt to bolster anticommunist South Vietnam and to avoid the impression of a US defeat.
“If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world,” Nixon told the nation on April 30, 1970, explaining his decision to expand the war into Cambodia. More than 20,000 Americans would die in Vietnam during Nixon’s presidency. The last US combat troops left the country in 1973, and the final US personnel were evacuated during the fall of Saigon in 1975, under President Gerald Ford.
More than 30 years later, President George W. Bush delivered his own wartime national address. He accepted responsibility for mistakes made but warned in 2007 that “failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.” He announced a surge of thousands more troops to help Iraq’s armed forces to fight insurgents.
History is yet to settle on a final verdict on that operation. The counterinsurgency did work in some areas. But the question of whether US casualties were justified is an agonizing one since the United States would eventually fully withdraw.
President Barack Obama was elected on a promise to end America’s forever wars. But eight years after the September 11 attacks that led the US into Afghanistan, he announced his own troop surge to reverse Taliban momentum and to finally crush al Qaeda. Mindful of the escalation trap that snared Johnson, Nixon and Bush, he vowed to start withdrawing troops in mid-2011. Critics argue the finite timeline encouraged US enemies to wait the US out.
America’s modern quagmires shaped Trump’s vehement critiques that helped him win the White House in 2016. Four days before he was elected president, he lashed out at “wars that never end, wars that we never win.”
But during his first term, Trump ordered his own troop increase in Afghanistan in a bid to finally end the war. “My original instinct was to pull out — and historically I like following my instincts,” he said. Less than three years later, he blamed his first defense secretary, James Mattis, for the decision, saying, “I gave him more people for a short period of time, and it didn’t work out.”
Now, Trump faces another of the lonely reckonings that he encapsulated in his national address on Afghanistan in 2017: “All my life, I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”
The Iran war is not Bush’s. It’s Trump’s own. And it will determine his legacy and the fates of many lives beyond the White House.