2026-03-03T05:00:34.033Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
在唐纳德·特朗普总统决定对伊朗发动打击的前几周以及之后的紧张日子里，总统及其政府提供了几种不断演变的解释——有时被夸大或与美国情报相矛盾——以证明发动袭击的必要性以及美国最终希望实现的目标。
据CNN消息来源透露，在周六美以联合军事打击导致伊朗最高领袖阿亚图拉·阿里·哈梅内伊遇袭身亡之前，特朗普及其高级官员夸大了伊朗攻击美国的能力以及德黑兰距离开发核武器的实际距离。
随后，在最初的打击浪潮之后，特朗普援引了对美国的“迫在眉睫的威胁”，而政府官员则称美国是对伊朗可能对该地区美军发动先发制人攻击的回应——但五角大楼向国会山的简报却与这些说法相矛盾，称伊朗并不计划发动攻击，除非首先遭到打击。
特朗普攻击伊朗政权的理由反复无常
特朗普对伊朗政权发动攻击的理由从1月份保护抗议伊朗街头的示威者，转变为捍卫美国免受伊朗制造核和远程武器的风险，再到消除一个几十年来支持杀害美国人的恐怖分子的政权。他呼吁伊朗人民控制自己的国家，尽管高级官员表示这场战争并非为了政权更迭。
“我相信，这次行动的目标现在已经改变了四五次，”参议院情报委员会最高民主党议员、弗吉尼亚州参议员马克·华纳表示。
华纳是在周一参加了与高级政府官员的机密简报会后发表上述言论的，政府在几个小时内就有机会向公众和国会解释其与伊朗的战争。政府官员将于周二向参众两院全体议员进行简报，此前民主党人已准备好投票限制特朗普对伊朗的军事行动。
特朗普为在伊朗开展“重大作战行动”而不断变化的理由尤为重要，因为他和他的政府在战争开始前——以及在美国人员开始伤亡之前——花了很少的时间向公众阐述开战理由。
已有六名美国军人在伊朗的报复性打击中丧生，特朗普已警告称这一数字可能还会增加。周一，美军表示，三架美国F-15E战斗机在科威特因“明显的友军火力事件”被击落，所有六名机组人员均安全弹射。
这场战争将成为特朗普总统任期内最具影响力的决定之一，而开战之际，公众对军事干预普遍持怀疑态度，国会也未投票授权军事行动。打击开始后，CNN通过SSRS进行的民调显示，近60%的美国人不赞成美国对伊朗采取军事行动，大多数人认为两国之间可能爆发长期军事冲突。
相比之下，公众最初支持乔治·W·布什总统入侵伊拉克，而伊拉克战争得到了国会的授权。但随着美军伤亡人数不断增加，以及政府官员关于伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器的错误情报，美国人对这场战争逐渐感到失望。
战争初期混乱的信息传达
在对伊朗的军事行动开始后的前48小时内，特朗普本人通过他在海湖庄园（Mar-a-Lago）发布到Truth Social上的视频以及与记者的大量电话采访，向公众传递了最初的信息——周六军事打击期间他一直躲在那里。
值得注意的是，军事行动开始后的第二天，没有任何高级政府官员或内阁成员出现在周日的电视节目上，取而代之的是特朗普在国会的盟友代表政府发言。
政府策略的转变与矛盾的解释
特朗普政府的策略在周一发生了转变。国防部长彼得·赫格斯泰（Pete Hegseth）和参谋长联席会议主席丹·凯恩将军在五角大楼向记者进行了简报。在白宫举行的国会荣誉勋章仪式上，特朗普详细阐述了采取军事行动的几个原因，包括摧毁伊朗的常规导弹能力和海军，并阻止伊朗资助恐怖组织和获得核武器。
国务卿马尔科·卢比奥（Marco Rubio）周一下午在向议员简报前，又给出了另一种打击解释，称伊朗构成了“迫在眉睫的威胁”，因为以色列发动攻击时伊朗会报复美军。自周六以来，美国和以色列一直在对伊朗进行轰炸。
在五角大楼，赫格斯泰拒绝为美国军事行动设定时间表，但表示此次行动“不是伊拉克战争”，不会旷日持久。
“这次行动是一个明确、毁灭性、决定性的任务：摧毁导弹威胁，摧毁海军，不让其拥有核武器，”赫格斯泰说。“这不是所谓的政权更迭战争，但政权确实已经改变，世界也因此变得更好。”
然而，特朗普最初暗示了不同的最终目标。在两段视频和一系列与记者的电话采访中，特朗普表示他希望“人民获得自由”，并希望伊朗人“夺回你们的国家”。但他也表示，他认为伊朗可能会效仿委内瑞拉的“完美场景”——即美国行动后，大部分执政政府仍掌权，而尼古拉斯·马杜罗（Nicolás Maduro）在1月份被美国抓捕。
白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特（Karoline Leavitt）在一份声明中表示，美国需要在伊朗政权比以往任何时候都更虚弱时采取行动，以免伊朗在能够增强能力并首先攻击美国之前。
“正如特朗普总统今天所说，这是我们最后一次、也是最好的机会去打击并消除这个由恐怖分子统治的病态邪恶政权构成的不可容忍的威胁，”莱维特说。
据消息来源和未分类的情报评估显示，特朗普及其高级官员在伊朗发动打击前多次歪曲和夸大了德黑兰对美国构成的威胁。
在上周的国情咨文演讲中，特朗普声称伊朗“正在努力制造将很快抵达美国的导弹”。在周六打击后的第一个视频以及周一的讲话中，他重复了类似的警告。
然而，消息来源告诉CNN，这一说法并未得到美国情报部门的支持。
2025年国防情报局的一份未分类评估报告称，如果德黑兰决定追求能力，伊朗可能在2035年前研制出“具有军事可行性”的洲际弹道导弹。
两名消息人士表示，目前没有情报表明伊朗正在推进洲际弹道导弹计划以打击美国。卢比奥上周没有回应国防情报局的报告，称他不会“猜测他们距离能够击中美国的导弹还有多远”。
“可以肯定的是，这是一个威胁。我们可以看到这是可能的，”他在新闻发布会上说。
特朗普官员还夸大了伊朗核计划的潜在进展，特朗普称在去年美国打击伊朗核设施后，伊朗的核计划已“被摧毁”。
特朗普的特使史蒂夫·维特科夫（Steve Witkoff）在福克斯新闻采访中表示，伊朗“可能在一周内就拥有工业级制弹材料”。
一位消息人士告诉CNN，情报显示伊朗正积极重建其浓缩铀能力，包括安装更多离心机、重新启动去年军事打击中幸存下来的离心机，并重建武器化所需的设施——其中许多设施在去年的打击中被破坏或摧毁。
但消息来源和专家表示，这一过程需要的时间远不止一周。
当然，这并不意味着伊朗对美国及其驻中东部队没有威胁。伊朗拥有短程弹道导弹库，在周六的初步打击后，这些导弹被用来袭击美国在该地区的基地和人员。
高级政府官员还表示，美国发动攻击的一个原因是伊朗正准备对美国在该地区的部队发动先发制人打击。
“我们有迹象表明，他们可能计划先发制人地使用这些武器，但如果没有，或者如果没有同时……对他们采取任何行动，就立即对我们采取行动，”一位高级政府官员在周六与记者的通话中表示。“总统决定他不会坐视美国在该地区的部队遭受常规导弹的袭击。”
但消息人士告诉CNN，一天后，五角大楼简报人员向国会工作人员承认，伊朗并不计划袭击美国在中东的部队或基地，除非以色列先攻击伊朗，这削弱了政府的说法。
赫格斯泰在周一的简报中表示，美国军事行动的一个原因是伊朗正在建造“强大的导弹和无人机，为其核讹诈野心构建常规盾牌”，尽管伊朗拥有导弹和无人机库已有数年之久。
保护抗议者与削弱伊朗核计划
1月份，特朗普提出要对伊朗采取军事行动，以回应德黑兰对上街抗议者的暴力镇压。
特朗普在Truth Social上写道：“如果伊朗杀害和平抗议者，美国将前来救援，我们已经准备就绪，随时可以行动。”
1月晚些时候，随着伊朗抗议活动的扩大，包括一名26岁抗议者即将被高调处决的计划，特朗普在Truth Social帖子中敦促伊朗人民“接管你们的机构”，并补充说“帮助正在路上”。
特朗普得到了打击伊朗的潜在方案简报，但总统选择了暂缓行动。
当美国开始与伊朗进行包括维特科夫和特朗普女婿贾里德·库什纳在内的谈判时，美国也开始在该地区集结部队。特朗普将其关注焦点转向了对伊朗核计划采取军事行动的威胁。（周一晚上，白宫发布了一份题为“特朗普总统74次明确表示伊朗不能拥有核武器”的新闻稿。）
军事集结持续到2月，即周六打击前的几天。特朗普暗示他希望实现政权更迭，称“这将是伊朗能发生的最好事情”。
战争的不明朗持续时间和最终目标
特朗普周六的军事行动朝着这一目标取得了进展，哈梅内伊和数十名其他高级伊朗官员在美以联合导弹袭击中丧生。
但在打击后的几天里，特朗普在一系列简短的电话采访中，对接下来会发生什么、美国在伊朗的军事行动持续多长时间以及谁可能接管该国的表述含糊不清。
周六在接受Axios采访时，特朗普说他可能“长期行动并接管整个国家，或者在两到三天内结束”。
周日，他在接受《每日邮报》采访时表示，这“大约需要四周时间”。周一接受CNN记者杰克·塔珀采访时，特朗普说：“我不希望战争持续太久。我一直认为可能需要四周。而我们现在有点提前于计划。”
特朗普还对伊朗最高领袖哈梅内伊死后美国在伊朗的计划提出了不同解释。
总统称他有几个不错的选择来领导伊朗，但他尚未公布这些人选。在接受美国广播公司（ABC）采访时，他表示这些候选人可能在周六的袭击中已被打死。
“这次袭击非常成功，摧毁了大多数候选人，”特朗普告诉美国广播新闻的乔纳森·卡尔。“这不会是我们之前想到的任何人，因为他们都死了。第二或第三选择也死了。”
特朗普暗示，美国在委内瑞拉的军事行动——美国部队抓捕了马杜罗，随后其副手德尔西·罗德里格斯在承诺与美国合作的情况下成为该国代理总统——也适用于伊朗。
“我们在委内瑞拉所做的，我认为是完美的、完美的场景，”特朗普告诉《纽约时报》，暗示伊朗不会发生政权更迭。
周一的五角大楼简报中，赫格斯泰驳斥了总统必须公开说明军事行动持续时间的说法。
“特朗普总统有充分的自由谈论行动可能需要多长时间，四周、两周、六周，可能提前或延后，”赫格斯泰说。“我们完全清楚他的想法，他会按照应该的方式沟通，确切地表达他的意愿，而我们将执行这些命令。”
本报告由CNN的克里斯汀·霍尔姆斯、莎拉·费里斯、劳伦·福克斯和马努·拉朱提供。
Trump’s Iran war message marked by exaggerated threats and shifting, contradictory goals
2026-03-03T05:00:34.033Z / CNN
In the weeks leading up to President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran and in the frenetic days since, the president and his administration have offered several evolving explanations — at times exaggerated or at odds with US intelligence — to justify why the attacks were necessary and what the US ultimately hopes to achieve.
Before Saturday’s joint US-Israeli military strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump and his top officials overstated Iran’s capabilities to attack the US and just how close Tehran was from developing a nuclear weapon, sources told CNN.
Then after the initial wave of strikes, Trump cited an “imminent threat” to the US and administration officials said that the US acted in response to potential preemptive attacks by Iran on forces in the region — claims that were contradicted in Pentagon briefings to Capitol Hill that stated Iran was not planning to attack unless struck first.
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Trump’s rationale for attacking the Iranian regime has whipsawed from protecting the demonstrators who protested in the streets of Iran in January to defending the US against the risk of Iran building nuclear and long-range weapons and eliminating a regime that’s backed terrorists killing Americans for decades. He’s called for the Iranian people to take control of their country even as top officials say the war is not about regime change.
“We have seen the goal for this operation change now, I believe, four or five times,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner spoke following a classified briefing with top administration officials on Monday, one of several opportunities the administration took within a span of hours to explain its war with Iran to the public and to Congress. The administration officials will brief the full House and Senate on Tuesday ahead of expected votes teed up by Democrats to curb Trump’s military action in Iran.
Trump’s shifting justification for undertaking “major combat operations” in Iran is especially significant because of how little time he and his administration spent making a public case for war before it started — and before it began costing American lives.
Six US service members were killed by Iranian retaliatory strikes, a number Trump already warned is likely to increase. On Monday, three US F-15E fighter jets were shot down in Kuwait due to an “apparent friendly fire incident, the US military said. All six crew members ejected safely.
The war is poised to be among the most consequential decisions of Trump’s presidency, and it’s beginning with a public already skeptical of military intervention and a Congress that did not vote to authorize military action. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the strikes began found nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran, as most say a long-term military conflict between the two nations is likely.
In contrast, the public initially supported President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which was authorized by Congress. But Americans soured on that war amid mounting US casualties — and faulty intelligence claims from administration officials that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In the first 48 hours after the military operation against Iran began, Trump himself delivered the initial wave of messaging to the public through videos posted to Truth Social from Mar-a-Lago — where he was hunkered down during Saturday’s military strikes — and numerous phone interviews with reporters.
Notably, no senior Trump administration officials or Cabinet members appeared on the Sunday show circuit a day after the military operation began, leaving it instead to Trump’s allies in Congress to speak on the administration’s behalf.
The Trump administration’s strategy shifted on Monday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine briefed reporters at the Pentagon. Speaking at a Medal of Honor event at the White House, Trump detailed several reasons for taking military action, including destroying Iran’s conventional missile capabilities and its Navy, and stopping Iran from funding terrorist groups and from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered yet another explanation for the strikes on Monday afternoon before briefing lawmakers, arguing that Iran posed an “imminent threat” because it was going to retaliate against US forces when Israel attacked. The US and Israel have both been bombing Iran since Saturday.
At the Pentagon, Hegseth declined to put a timeline on the US military campaign but said that the operation was “not Iraq” and would not be endless.
“This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission: Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nukes,” Hegseth said. “This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it.”
Trump, however, initially suggested different endgame goals. Speaking in two videos and a series of phone interviews with reporters, Trump said he wanted “freedom for the people” and for Iranians to “take back your country.” But he also said that he believed Iran could follow Venezuela in a “perfect scenario,” where most of the ruling government remained in power after a US operation captured Nicolás Maduro in January.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the US needed to act while the Iranian regime was weaker than ever, before Iran was able to build up its capabilities “and attack us first.”
“As President Trump said today, this was our last, best chance to strike and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime run by terrorists,” Leavitt said.
Trump and his top officials distorted and overstated the threat that Tehran posed to the US on several occasions in the lead-up to Iran’s strikes, according to sources and unclassified intelligence assessments.
At his State of the Union address last week, Trump claimed that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” He repeated a similar warning in his first video after the strikes on Saturday and in his remarks on Monday.
That assertion is not backed up by US intelligence, however, sources told CNN.
An unclassified assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2025 said that Iran could develop a “militarily-viable” intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
There is no intelligence to suggest that Iran is pursuing an ICBM program to hit the US at this time, two sources said. Rubio last week would not address the DIA report, saying he wouldn’t “speculate as to how far away they are” from a missile that could hit the US.
“Suffice it to say that it’s a threat. We can see that it’s possible,” he said at a press conference.
Trump officials have also exaggerated the potential advancement of Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump said was “obliterated” following US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy who took part in the diplomatic talks with Iran in recent weeks, said in a Fox News interview that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.”
A source told CNN that the intelligence shows Iran is actively trying to build back its enrichment capability, including installing additional centrifuges, getting back online centrifuges that survived the military strikes last year, and rebuilding facilities — many of which were damaged or destroyed — needed to weaponize the enriched uranium.
But sources and experts say that work would take much longer than a week.
That doesn’t mean, of course, Iran posed no threat to the US and its troops stationed in the Middle East. Iran possesses an arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles, which were used to target US bases and personnel in the Middle East after Saturday’s initial wave of strikes.
Senior administration officials have also said one reason the US attacked was that Iran was preparing to launch preemptive strikes against US forces in the region.
“We had indicators that they intended to use it potentially, preemptively, but if not, if not simultaneous … with any actions against them, immediately against us,” a senior administration official said in a call with reporters on Saturday. “And the president decided he was not going to sit back and allow America’s forces in the region to absorb attacks from conventional missiles.”
But one day later, Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional staff in a briefing that Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first, undercutting the administration’s claims, sources told CNN.
Hegseth said at Monday’s briefing that one reason for the US military operation was that Iran was building “powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions,” though Iran has possessed an arsenal of missiles and drones for several years.
Protecting protesters and crippling Iran’s nuclear program
In January, Trump floated taking military action in Iran in response to Tehran’s violent crackdown on protestors who had taken to the streets.
Trump warned that if Iran killed peaceful protesters, “the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Later in January as Iranian protests grew, including plans for a high-profile execution of a 26-year-old protester, Trump urged the Iranian people to “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS” in a Truth Social post, adding that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
Trump was briefed on potential options for striking Iran. But the president held back.
As the US began talks with Iran that included Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the US also began amassing forces in the region. Trump turned his focus on the threat of military action against Iran to its nuclear program. (On Monday evening, the White House put out a press release titled, “74 Times President Trump Has Made Clear That Iran Cannot Have a Nuclear Weapon.”)
The military buildup continued into February in the days leading up to Saturday’s strikes. Trump suggested he wanted regime change, saying it “would be the best thing that could happen” in Iran.
The war’s unclear length and endgame
Trump made headway toward that goal with Saturday’s military action, as Khamanei and dozens of other senior Iranian officials were killed in joint US-Israeli missile strikes.
But speaking in a series of brief phone interviews with reporters in the days since the strike, Trump has been muddied in suggesting what comes next, both in the length of the US military campaign in Iran and who might take over the country.
In an interview with Axios Saturday, Trump said that he could “go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days.”
On Sunday, he said in an interview with the Daily Mail it would “be four weeks or so.” In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, Trump said: “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
Trump has similarly offered different explanations for what the US plan is in Iran now that Khamenei is dead.
The president said that he had several good choices to lead Iran next, though he has yet to name them. And in an interview with ABC, he said that those options may have also been killed on Saturday.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
Trump has suggested that US military action in Venezuela — where US forces captured Maduro and then his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, became the country’s acting president amid pledges to work with the US — would work for Iran, too.
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Trump told The New York Times, suggesting something short of regime change in Iran.
During Monday’s Pentagon briefing, Hegseth pushed back on the notion that the president had to lay out the length of the military campaign publicly.
“President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take, four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back,” Hegseth said. “We know exactly where his headspace is, and he will communicate as he should, exactly what he would like, and we will follow those orders.”
CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox and Manu Raju contributed to this report.