2026-05-07T04:00:51.536Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
斯蒂芬·科林森 分析
发布于 2026年5月7日 美国东部时间00:00
中东 唐纳德·特朗普
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5月1日，唐纳德·特朗普总统在佛罗里达州棕榈滩走下“空军一号”。
罗伯托·施密特/盖蒂图片社
若能靠言辞赢得战争，唐纳德·特朗普的伊朗冲突早该在很久以前就结束了。
但这位总统仍未能找到脱身之法——这场本应持续不超过一个半月的战争，如今已进入第10个星期。
特朗普落入了两个自己设下的陷阱——一个地缘政治陷阱，另一个国内政治陷阱。伊朗对霍尔木兹海峡的控制力以及拒不妥协的态度，意味着他无法以可接受的军事代价彻底结束这场战争。
随着冲突持续升级，其国内政治影响进一步压缩了他的选择空间。支持率仅维持在30%出头、国内汽油均价超过每加仑4.5美元、民众对战争的反对声浪日益高涨，他已没有继续发动战争的政治空间。
因此，特朗普陷入了进退两难的境地——这一现实也解释了为何他始终高调宣称和谈取得进展，以及为何他总在毫无预兆的情况下宣布或变更军事战略。
最新的和解希望是一份正由美伊两国与第三方调解国巴基斯坦磋商的一页纸备忘录，CNN此前曾报道。该文件将结束战争，并启动为期30天的程序以解决双方分歧。
这或许符合特朗普偏好简单直接的行事风格。但即便双方达成一致，这份一页纸的协议似乎也不足以最终解决美伊之间近半个世纪的积怨——包括复杂的核谈判、伊朗的导弹项目以及其代理恐怖主义行动。
此外，伊朗要求大幅解除制裁以重振本国经济，同时希望借助通过该海峡的油气运输获利——伊朗已将霍尔木兹海峡转化为重要战略优势。
5月6日，摩托车驶过伊朗德黑兰市中心展示已故伊朗最高领袖阿里·哈梅内伊的广告牌。
瓦希德·萨莱米/美联社
预计伊朗将于周四向巴基斯坦调解员转交对美国方案的回应。多位消息人士称，当前的谈判是双方近几个月来最接近结束战争的一次。但愿这份乐观是有依据的，因为冲突带来的人力与经济代价正日益惨重。
但近几周来，特朗普多次宣称“协议即将达成”，且德黑兰已同意其所有要求——结果却因美国对手的强硬态度而不了了之。
仅持续数小时的美军新行动
从华盛顿视角来看，这场战争始终伴随着战略混乱、突发政策转向，以及对战争如何结束的模糊不清。这一趋势还在恶化。
其中一个典型例子是，美国国务卿马可·卢比奥周二几乎是随口提及这场代号为“史诗之怒行动”的战争已经结束。随后，他花了近一个小时推广特朗普数小时前临时提出的另一项行动，试图重新打通霍尔木兹海峡。但仅过了几个小时，“自由行动”就因仅护送少量船只安全通过而被叫停。特朗普称此举旨在推动和谈，但美国方面迅速采纳又快速放弃最新方案的做法，几乎没有传递出任何美军坚定作战的信号。
这场昙花一现的“自由行动”，是特朗普最新一次采用昆西负责任治国研究所伊朗问题专家特里塔·帕西所说的“银子弹”战略——即相信只需一次决定性行动就能迫使伊朗屈服。
先是美以联合空袭暗杀了伊朗最高领袖阿里·哈梅内伊，随后是针对军事目标的大规模空袭，接着是对伊朗船只和港口的封锁，最后是“自由行动”——但仅在数小时内就宣告结束。
3月，伊朗霍尔木兹甘省一所小学遭美军导弹袭击造成儿童遇难，在米纳卜举行的葬礼上，哀悼者挖掘墓穴。这张图片由伊朗新闻中心提供。
伊朗新闻中心/法新社/盖蒂图片社
4月29日，在德黑兰的一场集会上，一名男子手持旗帜，上面印有已故伊朗革命领袖阿亚图拉·鲁霍拉·霍梅尼、已故最高领袖阿里·哈梅内伊以及伊朗新任最高领袖莫赫塔巴·哈梅内伊的肖像。
马吉德-阿斯加里普尔/瓦纳通讯社/路透社
“的黎波里号”两栖攻击舰在阿拉伯海执行“自由行动”期间，一名海军军官在指挥塔上监督飞行作业。
美国海军
但在极端主义分子填补了遇害上级的职位空缺后，上述这些突然行动均未能撼动伊朗政权。目前没有任何迹象表明伊斯兰革命卫队的控制权出现分裂，更谈不上预示政权垮台。在伊朗残暴统治者看来，这场战争是其激进伊斯兰革命的生死存亡之战，而生存本身就等同于一种胜利。
任何期待总统展现清晰思路、或是找到连贯收尾方案的人，都会对特朗普周三在白宫对一群军人母亲发表的讲话感到失望。
特朗普的发言含糊其辞且满不在乎，轻描淡写了这场涉及数千名美军人员、庞大军事部署以及数十亿美元开销的复杂军事行动的规模。
“我们卷入了——我称之为一场小冲突，因为它本质上就是一场小冲突，而且我们做得棒极了，就像我们在委内瑞拉做的那样，那次行动迅速，一天就结束了，”特朗普说道，“我想说，我们在伊朗也做得同样出色——虽然规模更大，但我们进展非常顺利，一切都会很顺利。他们想达成协议，他们想谈判。”
令人匪夷所思的是，开战近70天后，这位总统仍将这场战争比作突袭委内瑞拉独裁者尼古拉斯·马杜罗的数小时闪电行动。
灵活性与即兴发挥本可以成为总统的优势。但特朗普近乎否认现实、含糊其辞的表态，听起来完全不像是一位知道如何结束这场战争的领导人。
5月6日，唐纳德·特朗普总统与副总统JD·万斯（左）在白宫举行的母亲节军人活动结束后离场。
杰奎琳·马丁/美联社
军事行动未能带来战略成功
即便战争尚未结束，它也注定会成为又一个例证，证明军力较弱的小国如何通过非对称战争对抗超级大国。
尽管美国政府声称已摧毁伊朗海空部队，并对其军事工业设施造成严重损失，这一说法大概率有证据支撑。但特朗普不愿部署数万地面部队——考虑到美国近年的历史，这是明智的自我克制之举——这意味着绝对的军事胜利从一开始就遥不可及。
但美军行动的局限性，加上伊朗发现了控制海峡所能带来的影响力——这一举措给全球经济造成了沉重打击，也给特朗普带来了相应的政治压力——让战场局势变得扑朔迷离。
“到目前为止，这场冲突的整个演变过程都凸显了一个巨大差距：美国的作战能力相当可观，但要以大多数人认可的成功标准达成战略结果，却困难重重，”美国德国马歇尔基金会杰出研究员伊恩·莱瑟说道。
这种差距解释了为何特朗普无法按照战争初期官员们提出的标准，实现一场迅速且决定性的美国战略胜利，以匹配军方取得的作战成果。
没有迹象表明伊朗民众起来反抗他们的专制统治者。伊朗尚未可核查地放弃其核计划野心，也未同意交出高浓缩铀库存。也无法保证伊斯兰革命卫队不会试图重建其在黎巴嫩或加沙的代理网络。
正如阿斯彭安全论坛执行长安雅·曼努埃尔周二对CNN记者杰克·塔珀所说：“这场冲突远未结束。”
曾在乔治·W·布什政府担任国务院官员的曼努埃尔补充道：“你可以更改行动代号，可以宣布停火或重启，但霍尔木兹海峡仍然处于关闭状态。我们正在封锁伊朗油轮，油价飙升，美国企业遭受损失，这场冲突远未得到解决。”
美国谈判立场如何逐步削弱
与此同时，美国的谈判弱点或许在周二不经意间被卢比奥暴露了出来，尽管他当时仍在附和特朗普的论调，称美国“掌握所有筹码”，并坚称美国海军封锁最终将迫使伊朗屈服。
这位国务卿表示，美国“更希望”霍尔木兹海峡恢复通航：“任何国家都可以使用。航道内没有水雷。没人需要缴纳通行费。这就是我们必须恢复的状态，也是我们的目标。”
但开战前海峡本就处于开放状态，而如今伊朗发现，它实际上可以将海峡作为重要的威慑工具。这条至关重要的航道如今已成为美伊谈判的核心议题，这凸显出战争的战略平衡已向德黑兰倾斜。
4月27日，从伊朗阿巴斯港望去，散货船、货船和服务船只在霍尔木兹海峡沿岸排成一列，孩子们在岸边的秋千上玩耍。
拉齐耶·保达特/伊斯法罕新闻社/美联社
为了身处险境的美军人员、伊朗手无寸铁的平民、受高油价困扰的美国民众，以及因特朗普发动的战争而蒙受经济损失的全球民众，迅速解决这场冲突至关重要。
但总统的含糊其辞、他对重大外交突破的一厢情愿，以及认为一份一页纸备忘录就能开启和平之门的想法，都让人愈发怀疑本届政府的诚意与能力。
Trump is trapped by his own strategy as he grapples for an exit in Iran
2026-05-07T04:00:51.536Z / CNN
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
PUBLISHED May 7, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
The Middle East Donald Trump
See all topics
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One in Palm Beach, Florida, on May 1.
Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images
If words won wars, Donald Trump’s Iran conflict would have ended long ago.
But the president still can’t find a way out of a war meant to last no more than a month and a half that is now grinding into its 10th week.
Trump is ensnared by two traps of his own making — one geopolitical and the other domestic. Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and refusal to fold mean he can’t definitively end the war at an acceptable military price.
And as the conflict drags on, its political impact at home further narrows his options. With an approval rating in the 30s, gas prices averaging over $4.50 a gallon and public opposition to the war rising, he’s got no political space to continue waging it.
So Trump is stuck — a reality that helps explain his incessantly upbeat claims of progress in peace talks and tendency to announce or change military strategies with no warning.
The latest hope is a one-page memo now being negotiated with the two countries and third-party mediator Pakistan, CNN has reported. The document would end the war and start a 30-day clock to resolve sticking points.
This might suit Trump’s taste for simplicity. But a one-pager, even if it is agreed upon, seems insufficient to finally solve a near half-century of US issues with Tehran — including intricate nuclear negotiations and its missile and proxy terror programs.
Then there are Iran’s demands for huge sanctions relief to revive its economy and its desire to profit from the passage of oil and gas tankers through a strait it has turned into a major strategic advantage.
Motorbikes drive past a billboard with graphic showing the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in downtown Tehran, Iran, on May 6.
Vahid Salemi/AP
Iran is expected to hand its responses to the US plan to Pakistani mediators on Thursday. Some sources said that current negotiations are the closest the two sides have come to ending the war. It is to be hoped that optimism is justified, since the conflict’s human and economic costs are dire and growing.
But Trump has claimed multiple times in recent weeks that a “deal” was about to come together and that Tehran had agreed to all his demands — only for the reality of an unyielding US foe to reassert itself.
The new US operation that lasted only hours
From Washington, this war has been plagued by strategic confusion, sudden shifts and a fogginess about how it ends. The trend is getting worse.
In one example, Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned almost in passing Tuesday that the war — “Operation Epic Fury” — was over. He then spent nearly an hour pushing another operation conjured up hours before by Trump in an attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But within a few hours, “Project Freedom” was paused after shepherding only a few vessels to safety. Trump said he was trying to boost peace talks. But the rapid adoption and abandonment of the latest US approach hardly sent a message of US resolve.
The short-lived Project Freedom was Trump’s latest deployment of what Iran expert Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft called a “silver bullet” strategy — a belief that one decisive action can make Iran bend.
First, the US and Israeli bombing campaign assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Next up was a fearsome bombing campaign against military targets; then, a blockade of Iranian ships and ports. Then “Project Freedom” came and — within a few hours — went away.
In this aerial handout picture released by the Iranian Press Center, mourners dig graves during the funeral for children killed in a US missile strike on a primary school in Iran’s Hormozgan province in Minab on March 3.
Iranian Press Center/AFP/Getty Images
A man holds a flag with a picture of late leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, late Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei during a rally in Tehran on April 29.
Majid-Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters
A naval officer aboard USS Tripoli oversees flight operations from the control tower as the amphibious assault ship sails in the Arabian Sea while executing Project Freedom.
US Navy
But none of these sudden moves succeeded in dislodging Iran’s regime after a new layer of extremists slotted into the spots of their martyred superiors. There is no sign of a splintering of the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that might presage regime collapse. In a war that Iran’s brutal rulers see as existential for their radical Islamic revolution, survival equals a kind of victory.
Anyone hoping for clarity of thought from the commander in chief or evidence of a coherent endgame will have been disappointed by his remarks at the White House on Wednesday to a group of military mothers.
Trump was vague and blasé, playing down the scale of a complex military campaign involving thousands of US personnel, a massive military footprint and billions of dollars.
“We’re in — I call it a skirmish because that’s what it is, it’s a skirmish. And we’re doing unbelievably well, as we did in Venezuela, where it was rapid, over in one day,” Trump said. “And we’re doing pretty much equally as well, I would say — larger, but we’re doing very well in Iran. It’s going very smoothly, and we’ll see what happens. They want to make a deal, they want to negotiate.”
It is extraordinary that nearly 70 days into the war, the president has reverted to comparing it to the hourslong lightning raid that seized Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Flexibility and improvisation can be strengths in a president. But Trump’s remarks, verging on denial and obfuscation, did not sound like those of a leader who knows how to get out of this war.
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, left, walk at the conclusion of a Mother’s Day event for members of the military at the White House on May 6.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
How a military operation failed to yield a strategic success
Even before it ends, this war is destined to be another lesson in how smaller, outgunned countries can defy superpowers with asymmetric warfare.
It is likely that administration claims to have destroyed Iran’s naval and air forces and to have inflicted severe losses on its military industrial establishment are backed up by evidence. Trump’s unwillingness to deploy tens of thousands of ground troops — a wise act of self-restraint given America’s recent history — meant that an unequivocal military victory was always out of reach.
But the limitations on US operations, combined with Iran’s discovery of the power of its seizure of the strait — which has inflicted severe pain on global economies, and consequent political pressure on Trump — have muddied the battlefield.
“The whole evolution of the conflict so far underscores the enormous gap between America’s operational capability capacity, which is substantial, and the difficulty in bringing a kind of strategic result on terms most people would judge as a success,” said Ian Lesser, a distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
That disconnect explains Trump’s inability to enforce a swift and decisive US strategic victory on terms mentioned by officials at the outset of the war to match the operational one achieved by the military.
USS Abraham Lincoln conducts US blockade operations in the Arabian Sea, on April 16.
US Navy/US Central Command Public Affairs
US Vice President JD Vance meets with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on April 11, for talks about Iran.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AP
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine presents an Operation Epic Fury ceasefire timeline during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on May 5.
Benjamin D Applebaum/Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There has been no uprising by Iranians against their tyrannical rulers. Iran has not yet verifiably renounced its aspirations to have a nuclear program or agreed to hand over its stocks of highly enriched uranium. There are no guarantees that the IRGC will not try to rebuild its proxy networks in Lebanon or Gaza.
As Anja Manuel, executive director of the Aspen Security Forum, said to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “This conflict is not over.”
Manuel, a State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, added: “You can change the name of the operation, you can declare the ceasefire on or off, but what remains the case is the Straits of Hormuz is closed. We are blocking Iranian tankers, oil is sky-high, American companies are suffering and this conflict is nowhere near resolved.”
How the US negotiating position has eroded
Weaknesses in the US negotiating position, meanwhile, were laid bare, perhaps inadvertently, by Rubio in the White House Briefing Room on Tuesday, even as he amplified Trump’s line that the US “holds all the cards” and insisted the US naval blockade would eventually bring Iran to its knees.
The secretary of state said the US “preference” was for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened: “Anyone can use it. No mines in the water. Nobody paying tolls. That’s what we have to get back to, and that’s the goal here.”
But the strait was open before the war started, and Iran has now discovered that it can in fact be used as a major tool of deterrence. That the vital waterway is now at the center of negotiations between the US and Iran underscores how the strategic balance of the war has tilted in Tehran’s direction.
Children play on a swing along the shore as a mix of bulk carriers, cargo ships, and service vessels line the horizon in the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Bandar Abbas, Iran, on April 27.
Razieh Poudat/ISNA/AP
For the sake of US service personnel in harm’s way, Iran’s defenseless civilians, Americans vexed by high gas prices and people around the world hurt economically by Trump’s war, a swift resolution is vital.
But the president’s imprecision; his apparent wish-casting about staggering diplomatic breakthroughs; and the idea that a one-page memo could hold the key to peace raise new doubts about the administration’s seriousness and capacity.
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