2026-03-31T04:00:54.709Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
斯蒂芬·科林森 分析报道
发布于 2026年3月31日，美国东部时间凌晨12:00
一架隶属于第37攻击战斗机中队的F/A-18E“超级大黄蜂”战机于3月2日在地中海东部执行“史诗之怒”行动期间，降落在全球最大航空母舰“杰拉尔德·R·福特”号的飞行甲板上。
美国海军
唐纳德·特朗普总统一再宣称乌克兰在与俄罗斯的消耗战中毫无筹码可言。但这位美国总统如今却面临越来越多的质疑，人们质疑他在对伊朗战争中自身的底牌实力。
从表面上看，美国人口是伊朗的三倍多，拥有全球最强大的军事和经济实力，在实力对比上拥有压倒性优势。再加上以色列久经考验的军事力量和无孔不入的情报机构，这场战争看起来本应是一场不对等的较量。
但伊朗——通过将自身为数不多的优势转化为美国难以承受的施压点，并迫使受压制的本国民众承受巨大代价——不仅成功存续了下来。一些分析人士认为，它已经掌握了战略主动权。
开战一个月以来，这场战争已经演变为一场杠杆博弈。特朗普或许拥有更多实力，但要取得明确的胜利，他可能需要接受自己不愿承受的政治和经济损失。
伊朗无法击败美国和以色列，但它打出了终极王牌：封锁霍尔木兹海峡这一关键能源出口咽喉要道，从而挟持全球经济，并让美国付出政治代价。
特朗普外交的空洞胜利
周一白宫简报会上的一段对话凸显了削弱美军优势的战略弱点。
白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特称，伊朗愿意在未来几天内额外放行20艘油轮通过海峡，这是“总统外交的胜利”。但这一表态的观感颇为刺眼，因为作为更强大的一方，美国本不应处于谈判让步的位置。
根据联合国贸易和发展会议的计算，与开战前日均超过100艘的通行量相比，这20艘油轮的数量微不足道。若不是这场战争，海峡本就处于开放状态。因此，在莱维特的表述中，特朗普首个看似外交胜利不过是挽回了自己负面影响的一小部分。
2026年3月27日，唐纳德·特朗普总统抵达佛罗里达州西棕榈滩的棕榈滩国际机场。
伊丽莎白·弗朗茨/路透社
对特朗普而言，一个令人不快的现实是，美国无疑拥有足够的军事力量开放海峡。但如果伊朗袭击甚至击沉美军舰艇，美军舰队穿越海峡将让伊朗赢得宣传上的胜利。他可能还不得不派遣地面部队击退伊朗军队，这将增加美军战斗人员伤亡的风险，进而动摇他本就低迷的政治支持率。
同样的限制也适用于特朗普的其他选项，比如他正在考虑是否夺取波斯湾北部伊朗石油出口的神经中枢哈尔克岛。他上周日告诉《金融时报》，他或许希望夺取伊朗的石油。这一举措可能会扼杀伊朗经济，但无法保证这会促使伊朗政权投降，而非展开更猛烈的反击。而且这还会让伊朗更没有动力放松对霍尔木兹海峡的控制。
在试图强化自身筹码的同时，特朗普声称幕后正在与伊朗展开富有成效的外交接触，尽管伊朗方面否认双方正在进行直接会谈。但他同时也威胁要采取前所未有的暴力行动，迫使德黑兰坐到谈判桌前。
数千名美国海军陆战队抵达该地区，以及超过1000名空降部队的派遣，让一些分析人士确信特朗普的耐心即将耗尽，他将下令美军夺取哈尔克岛或海峡内的其他岛屿。“这远远不是撤军的途径，看起来几乎可以肯定即将进入一段升级期，”欧亚集团总裁兼创始人伊恩·布雷默周一在CNN《新闻中心》节目中表示。
特朗普此前曾警告称，如果伊朗不达成协议，他将动用美军优势武器，“彻底摧毁他们所有的发电厂、油井和哈尔克岛（可能还有所有海水淡化厂！）”。
3月，华盛顿特区白宫举行新闻发布会，白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特发言。
布兰丹·斯米亚洛夫斯基/法新社/盖蒂图片社
美军当然有能力做到这一点。但伊朗必然会对美国海湾盟友境内的类似目标展开报复性袭击。全球市场将陷入崩溃，全球经济衰退的高风险将进一步加剧。而轰炸对海湾干旱沙漠地区的民生至关重要的海水淡化厂，这一可能性也让记者们就特朗普可能犯下战争罪的问题向莱维特提出质疑。
华盛顿确实握有一张尚未打出的重要王牌。它有能力最终解除对伊朗石油出口和多个经济领域的制裁。由于无法通过正常渠道销售石油，伊朗伊斯兰共和国已经濒临崩溃。最近一次被安全部队残酷镇压的国内起义，部分原因就在于这种经济困境。
美国的一种潜在策略可能是切断伊朗的石油出口，但这对特朗普的伤害可能不亚于伊朗。本月早些时候，政府因油价飙升而陷入恐慌，采取了取消对伊朗海上油轮制裁的违反直觉的举措，凸显了这一棘手的两难局面。
除此之外，白宫几乎没有向伊朗提供任何可以促进外交谈判的甜头。
其提出的15项和平协议要求中有许多是德黑兰绝不会接受的——包括严格限制其导弹项目，以及无条件放松对海峡的控制。
而美国政府决心仅从最狭隘的军事视角看待这场冲突。
它每日更新对伊朗目标的打击计数——周一已达11000次——这可能会让人联想到越南战争中的伤亡人数统计，而这些统计掩盖了整场战争的破坏性本质。
“毫不奇怪，我们看到该政权的残余势力越来越渴望结束这场破坏，在他们还能做到的时候坐到谈判桌前，”莱维特周一对记者表示。
这一总结似乎与现实并不相符。
3月21日，阿曼马斯喀特的苏丹卡布斯港，一艘油轮驶入马斯喀特锚地时遭遇闪电。
埃尔克·斯科利尔斯/盖蒂图片社
伊朗握有一张虽小却极具价值的战略王牌
伊朗或许在军事上不占上风，但它对海峡的封锁赋予了它不成比例的影响力。
这一举措已经在远至非洲和亚洲的地区引发了经济和燃料危机。如果海上交通中断持续数周，可能会引发经济灾难，进而让特朗普付出沉重的国内政治代价。
随着战争的持续，伊朗也给其美国盟友的海湾邻国带来了巨大影响——这些国家正试图通过发展全球旅游业、交通枢纽和体育中心来转型其以碳为基础的经济。
美国和以色列或许正确判断他们已经摧毁了伊朗大部分的无人机和导弹能力。但德黑兰只需向海峡或海湾城市发射少量弹药，就能造成不成比例的经济损失。
随着时间的推移，伊朗的影响力似乎还在增强。战争持续越久，对这位总统的成本就越高，这意味着他可能会考虑达成一份让自己看起来更像恳求者而非强者的协议。
3月27日，伊朗德黑兰，一名男子查看遭袭击受损的住宅楼。
马吉德·阿斯加里普尔/WANA/路透社
不过，该政权要长期存续，就需要解除制裁。
而特朗普的耐心正在倒计时。如果近期无法开展真正的外交接触，他可能会不可避免地推动局势升级，届时他将无法回头接受和解——无论代价如何。
“一旦他失去了这种能力，与继续加码的动机相比，他寻求撤军的动机将再次向错误的方向偏移，”负责任国家craft研究所的特里塔·帕尔西说道。“所以伊朗需要认识到，尽管它们可能比特朗普拥有更多时间，但它们并没有无限的时间。”
归根结底，战争中的杠杆作用只有在能带来战略胜利时才有价值。美国和伊朗都拥有可能起到决定性作用的优势，但它们必须谨慎出牌。如果双方都不给对方留一条退路，可能会将彼此乃至整个世界推向灾难。
Why America’s hard-power military might isn’t ending the Iran war
2026-03-31T04:00:54.709Z / CNN
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
PUBLISHED Mar 31, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
An F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron 37, lands on the flight deck of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, while operating in support of Operation Epic Fury in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea on March 2.
US Navy
Donald Trump is fond of telling Ukraine it has no cards in its attritional war with Russia. But the US president is facing growing questions about the strength of his own deck in the war with Iran.
Superficially, the United States, with more than three times Iran’s population and the world’s most powerful military and economy, has an overwhelming edge in the balance of power. Add in Israel’s tested military and all-seeing intelligence machine and it seems an unfair fight.
But Iran — by turning its few areas of advantage into painful pressure points for the US, and by forcing its repressed people to absorb massive punishment — has done more than survive. Some analysts believe it has seized the strategic initiative.
One month in, the war has become a contest of leverage. Trump may have more power, but achieving an unequivocal victory would likely require him to accept a level of political and economic damage he’s loath to endure.
Iran can’t defeat the US and Israel, but it played its ultimate trump card by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a major energy exporting choke point, thereby holding the global economy hostage and building political costs for the US.
A hollow win for Trump’s diplomacy
The strategic vulnerability undermining US military superiority was highlighted by an exchange in a White House briefing on Monday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited Iran’s willingness to allow an additional 20 tankers to sail through the Strait in the coming days as a win for “the president’s diplomacy.” Yet the optics are jarring, since the US, as the greater power, shouldn’t be in the position of negotiating concessions.
And this fleet of 20 tankers is insignificant compared to the daily average of well over 100 per day before the war, as calculated by UN Trade and Development. Were it not for the war, the Strait would be open. So, in Leavitt’s telling, Trump’s first ostensible diplomatic victory is merely undoing a fraction of his own negative impact.
President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 27.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
The unappealing reality for Trump is that the United States undoubtably has the military might to open the Strait. But sending the US Navy through the Strait would hand Iran a propaganda victory if it struck or even sank a US vessel. He’d probably also have to land ground troops to push back Iranian forces, raising the risk of US combat deaths that could buckle his already-low political standing.
The same constraints apply to Trump’s other options as he considers whether to seize the nerve center of Iran’s oil exports on Kharg Island in the northern Persian Gulf. He told the Financial Times on Sunday that he’d perhaps like to seize Iran’s oil. Such a move might strangle the Iranian economy. But there’s no guarantee that would cause the regime to capitulate rather than lash out. And it would give it even less of an incentive to loosen its control of the Strait of Hormuz.
As he seeks to strengthen his own hand, Trump is claiming that productive diplomacy is unfolding behind the scenes with Iran, despite its denials that direct talks are underway. But he’s also threatening unprecedented violence to bring Tehran to the table.
The arrival of thousands of US Marines in the region — and the dispatch of more than 1,000 airborne troops — has some analysts convinced that Trump’s patience will run out and that he will order US troops to take Kharg Island or islands in the Strait. “That’s very far from an off-ramp. That looks like almost certainly like a period of escalation is coming,” Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the Eurasia Group, said on CNN News Central on Monday.
Trump had earlier warned that if Iran didn’t make a deal, he would weaponize the US military advantage by “completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Certainly the US military could do this. But reprisal attacks by Iran would be inevitable on similar targets on the territory of US Gulf allies. Global markets would go into meltdown. The already-high risk of a worldwide recession would increase. And the prospect of bombing desalination plants vital to supporting life in the parched desert conditions of the Gulf prompted reporters to question Leavitt over the possibility that Trump could commit a war crime.
Washington does have an important card that it’s yet to play. It has the capacity to eventually lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and multiple sectors of the economy. The Islamic Republic has been driven to its knees by its inability to sell oil through normal channels. The latest uprising against the regime — brutally put down by security forces — was partly brought on by this deprivation.
One potential US tactic might be to choke off Iran’s oil exports. But this could hurt Trump as much as Iran. This remarkable conundrum was highlighted earlier this month when the administration took the counterintuitive step of lifting sanctions on Iranian ships at sea because it was so spooked by skyrocketing oil prices.
Otherwise, the White House is offering Iran little to sweeten its diplomacy.
Its 15-point list of demands for a peace deal contains many that Tehran would never accept — including strict curbs on its missile programs and an unconditional loosening of its grip on the Strait.
And the administration is determined to view the conflict through the narrowest of military lenses.
Its daily updating of a tally of attacks on Iranian targets — which reached 11,000 on Monday — risks drawing comparisons with the body counts in the Vietnam War that obscured the damaging span of the war in its entirety.
“It’s no surprise that we are seeing the remaining elements of the regime become increasingly eager to end the destruction and come to the negotiating table while they still can,” Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
This is not a summation of the war that seems to match reality.
Lightning occurs while an oil tanker sails into Muscat Anchorage on March 21, at Sultan Qaboos Port in Muscat, Oman.
Elke Scholiers/Getty Images
Iran has a small but hugely valuable strategic card to play
Iran might not enjoy the upper hand militarily, but its closure of the Strait gives it disproportionate power.
Its move has already triggered economic and fuel crises as far away as Africa and Asia. Many more weeks of disrupted maritime traffic could unleash an economic cataclysm — and in turn impose fierce domestic political costs on Trump.
Iran’s prolonging of the war is also inflicting huge consequences on its US-allied Gulf neighbors as they seek to transform their carbon-based economies by building global tourism, transit and sporting hubs.
The US and Israel are probably right that they’ve destroyed most of Iran’s drones and missile capacity. But Tehran only has to toss a few projectiles into the Strait, or into Gulf cityscapes, to impose a disproportionate economic cost.
Iran’s leverage also seems to be growing with time. The longer the war goes on, the higher the costs for the president, meaning he might consider a deal that makes him look more like a supplicant than a strongman.
A man looks at a residential building damaged by a strike in Tehran, Iran, on March 27.
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
Still, the regime’s long-term regime survival would require sanctions to be lifted.
And the clock is ticking on Trump’s tolerance. If genuine diplomacy does not take place soon, he may be pushed inexorably into an escalation that makes it impossible for him to step back and accept a settlement — whatever the costs.
“Once he loses that capability, his incentives for an off-ramp, compared to the incentives for doubling down, will then shift again in the wrong direction,” said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “So the Iranians need to recognize that they don’t have all the time on their side, even though they probably have more time on their side than Trump does.”
Ultimately, leverage in a war is only valuable if it delivers a strategic victory. Both the United States and Iran maintain advantages that could be decisive. But they must play their cards carefully. A failure of each to offer the other a way out could lead them, and the world, toward catastrophe.