2026-03-21T09:00:33.727Z / CNN
在与白宫高级军事官员近乎每日的简报会上，唐纳德·特朗普总统审议了包括向伊朗派遣美军在内的多种选择。
自2月28日美军发动打击以来，是否继续推进军事行动可能是他面临的最艰难的战争决策。
对于许多华盛顿的特朗普盟友而言，向中东派遣数千名美军将意味着他们公开支持这场战争的立场迅速终结——并可能威胁到政府获得白宫即将寻求的数千亿美元补充资金的能力。
但对特朗普而言，要完全实现其目标并减轻战争的影响，可能需要派遣美军，这是一项影响其政治遗产的举措。尽管他并未排除这一可能性，但本周试图淡化这种说法。
“我不会向任何地方派遣军队，”特朗普周四在椭圆形办公室表示。“如果我要这么做，肯定不会告诉你。”
随着特朗普在伊朗的战争进入第四周，各方对冲突如何结束的压力越来越大。经济影响已导致许多特朗普的共和党盟友（他们正面临11月中期选举的艰难政治局面）敦促他找到出路。
然而，具体如何实现这一点仍不明确。周五晚间，特朗普似乎默认了外界对其最终战略的疑虑，称他将“考虑尽快结束战争”，尽管新的海军陆战队部队正开赴该地区。
根据特朗普及其顾问公开透露的时间表，四周期限（下周六到期）为军事行动计划的结束点打开了窗口。特朗普宣称任务“提前完成”，并暗示战争将比任何人预期的更快结束。
但在这个目标日期前一周，他在战争开始时设定的雄心勃勃的目标仍在推进中，战争的后续影响仍在不断蔓延，其代价——无论是金钱还是生命——都在持续上升。
伊朗决定关闭霍尔木兹海峡已引发全球经济震动，并招致批评，称特朗普对伊朗的攻击决策未充分考虑后果。
美国官员正拼命试图避免这一关键水道可能长达数月的关闭。多名政府和情报官员告诉CNN，他们私下承认，重新开放这条关键水道是一个没有明确解决方案的问题，至少部分取决于特朗普愿意采取何种手段迫使伊朗政权屈服。
此外，美国与以色列的目标也日益分歧，这引发了两国对各自预期最终结局的质疑。私下里，以色列方面明白特朗普的政治时间表比以色列总理内塔尼亚胡希望的冲突结束时间要短得多。
“毫无疑问，他的政治时钟比我们的更短、更紧迫，”一位以色列官员在谈到特朗普时告诉CNN。“一旦他决定停止，他就会停止，说‘我们赢了’，然后就结束了。”
该官员表示，以色列正在为“一切可能在瞬间结束”的可能性做准备。
特朗普周五告诉CNN，他相信以色列会在他决定结束战争时准备就绪。
“我认为是的，”他补充道。“我们想要的结果大致相似。我们都想要胜利。这就是我们正在做的。”
宣告胜利并抽身
随着冲突扩大，特朗普本周对他认为是对行动成功的负面媒体报道感到恼怒，谴责那些他认为夸大战争代价的新闻报道。
他本周还抨击了那些他认为对参与霍尔木兹海峡巡逻不够积极的北约盟友，在短暂尝试建立联盟无果后宣称自己实际上不需要任何人的帮助。
“我这辈子从没见过他这么生气，”伊朗战争的主要支持者、参议员林赛·格雷厄姆在社交媒体上写道。
许多共和党议员告诉CNN，到目前为止，他们对政府的秘密简报感到满意。但其中一些人表示，特朗普及其团队很快需要向公众公布其战略——否则可能面临来自选民的反弹。
“一直以来，我们都被保证不会出现大量美军地面部队的情况，”新泽西州共和党众议员杰夫·范德鲁表示，他经常与特朗普沟通。“地面部队部署将是我的底线。总统向我们保证不会发生这种情况。显然，我会相信他的话。但我们不希望无休止的战争。”
据一位熟悉相关对话的消息人士透露，尽管特朗普仍在权衡包括向伊朗派遣美军在内的潜在选择，但他也在定期与共和党盟友沟通，鼓励他们采取不同策略：宣告胜利并抽身。
一些资深共和党议员告诉特朗普，一旦军方实现参谋长联席会议主席丹·凯恩将军在近期五角大楼新闻发布会上概述的目标——摧毁伊朗海军、导弹能力和工业基地——就可以将这场战争合理地视为成功。
尽管这种情况不会完全消除伊朗核野心和代理势力相关的威胁，但一些特朗普盟友认为，升级冲突并派遣美军地面部队是灾难的前兆。
“五角大楼的职责是做好准备，以便为总统提供最大的选择权，”白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特在一份声明中表示。“这并不意味着总统已经做出决定，正如总统昨天在椭圆形办公室所说，他目前不打算向任何地方派遣地面部队。”
特朗普称，美国和以色列在摧毁伊朗导弹和无人机库方面取得了显著成功，并击沉了其大部分海军舰艇。国防部长彼得·黑格斯周四表示，美国已对伊朗发动超过7000次打击。
但特朗普最常提到的战争核心目标——彻底消除伊朗制造核武器的能力——尚未实现：高度浓缩核燃料仍深埋地下，伊朗相关专业知识依然存在。
“伊朗的根本优势在于，这些知识无法通过轰炸消除，”一位欧洲外交官表示。“他们有很多非常聪明的科学家，几十年来政府一直在资助他们专门研究核问题。有了这些基础知识，B-2轰炸机无法将其彻底摧毁。”
有迹象表明，尽管特朗普尚未就向伊朗派遣地面部队做出决定，政府正在为各种可能性做准备。
数千名额外的美国海军陆战队员和水手正前往中东。第11海军陆战队远征部队和拳师号两栖预备群的部署已被重新调整并加速，预计将前往中东，两名美国官员告诉CNN。
政府私下考虑的行动包括：占领伊朗的霍姆兹岛——该岛是伊朗约90%原油出口的经济生命线——或彻底摧毁岛上的石油基础设施。美国已在该岛打击军事设施，政府内部认为这是一个关键杠杆点，可能迫使伊朗同意重新开放霍尔木兹海峡。
美国地面部队在伊朗会是什么样子？
“对霍尔木兹岛的攻击是一个信号，但问题在于总统愿意采取何种行动让伊朗认为‘继续控制这一咽喉要道不符合我们的利益’，”一位美国情报官员告诉CNN。
白宫官员认为，占领霍尔木兹岛将“彻底摧毁”伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队，一位官员表示，这可能迅速结束战争。但政府内部许多人对此行动持谨慎态度，尤其是考虑到这需要大量地面部队才能实现。
另一场可能更危险的地面行动是夺取伊朗的浓缩铀。这些可能被德黑兰用于制造核弹的铀筒，据信掩埋在美国去年6月轰炸伊朗核设施后留下的废墟之下。
任何回收埋藏铀的任务都将极其危险。本周访问华盛顿的国际原子能机构总干事拉斐尔·格罗西表示，这些“铀筒和圆柱”理论上可以被移动。然而，他补充说，“如果在军事行动中直接命中，可能会导致污染风险。”
向伊朗派遣地面部队的问题令部分共和党人感到不安。
威斯康星州共和党众议员德里克·范奥登曾是海军海豹突击队员，他向CNN明确表示反对任何地面部队部署：“我不希望看到这种情况发生。”
“我认为我们需要尽快找到退出策略，”田纳西州众议员蒂姆·伯切特补充道。“我不希望美国人以任何形式、任何方式在那里部署地面部队。”
本月早些时候，特拉华州多佛空军基地举行了六名在科威特阵亡士兵的庄严转移仪式，其中包括来自他所在州的一名中士。共和党众议员迈克·弗洛德表示，他“不想让家庭经历这样的事”，并希望战争即将结束。
“每个人都希望这场战争结束，”弗洛德说。
当特朗普本周首次听到以色列计划打击伊朗关键的南帕尔斯气田时，并未立即敲响警钟。相反，美国官员认为这次袭击是向伊朗施压以重新开放霍尔木兹海峡的一种方式，知情人士说。
直到伊朗对卡塔尔的天然气设施发动报复性打击后，特朗普才宣称美国“对此次袭击一无所知”。
第二天早上，特朗普表示，他已警告内塔尼亚胡不要进一步打击伊朗的能源设施。
“这是协调好的，”特朗普在椭圆形办公室表示。“但有时他会做一些我不喜欢的事。所以我们不会再做那样的事了。”
自战争开始以来，特朗普和内塔尼亚胡几乎每天都在通话。尽管特朗普政府试图为战争设定具体军事目标，但内塔尼亚胡的目标似乎更加开放，因为以色列正在暗杀德黑兰越来越多的高层领导人。
在本周的国会听证会上，国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德承认，美国和以色列政府在伊朗战争中的目标“不同”，并表示她不知道以色列是否会支持与伊朗达成协议。
“从行动中可以看出，以色列政府一直专注于削弱伊朗领导层，”加巴德在周四众议院情报委员会的全球威胁听证会上表示。
几位西方官员告诉CNN，他们认为以色列到目前为止的目标表明，其战略是通过切断伊朗的金融命脉和推翻其领导结构来使伊朗崩溃。这似乎与特朗普的有限军事目标不同。
特朗普还担心，对伊朗能源基础设施的攻击可能导致能源成本进一步飙升。他表示，伊朗油田燃烧的画面只会让美国人想起战争导致的油价上涨。
“毫无疑问，有显著的军事成就，”一位前以色列高级安全官员表示。“但用政治术语来说，‘是战略，笨蛋’。”
“伊朗不是加沙。它是一个拥有无尽领导层和指挥储备的大国。推翻政权可能需要数月或数年时间，”这位前官员继续说道。“今天的收获可能很快就会消失。”
另一位前以色列高级官员表示，部分挑战在于美国和以色列都没有为伊朗的领导层更迭做准备。
“过去15-20年里，中央情报局和摩萨德并没有真正投入精力在这方面。这在优先考虑核问题、导弹、伊朗、真主党或政权更迭时被放在了次要位置，”这位前官员告诉CNN。
《经济学人》本周的一篇文章中，阿曼外交大臣——曾担任已失败谈判的谈判代表——认为“美国已经失去了对其外交政策的控制权。”
“现在应该清楚的是，为了实现其宣称的目标，以色列需要一场长期的军事行动，而美国将不得不派遣地面部队，这将在总统唐纳德·特朗普此前发誓要结束的‘永久战争’中开辟新的战线。这不是美国政府想要的，其人民也不希望如此，他们当然不认为这是他们的战争，”巴德尔·阿尔布赛迪写道。
许多美国盟友越来越担心，未来的伊朗政权可能会因为视持续的军事行动为对其存在的威胁，而加速推进核武器计划。
即使特朗普决定派遣地面部队进入伊朗以移除高浓缩铀，开发未来核计划的知识可能仍然存在。
美国盟友已倡导反对此类地面行动，消息人士称。然而，特朗普个人对这一问题的想法仍不明确。
无论是否向伊朗派遣地面部队，伊朗政权在战争结束后可能决定重启核武器开发计划的可能性，正沉重地影响着美国盟友。
“经历这一切后，他们为什么不加速开发核弹呢？”一位地区外交官在谈到伊朗政权时表示。“这是我们在美军发动战争前就有的担忧。”
在本周的国会证词中，中央情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫表示，伊朗目前的浓缩铀数量与去年6月“午夜锤子”行动前相同。加巴德在其准备好的证词中表示，自那次打击以来，伊朗没有任何重建铀浓缩活动的迹象。
“被轰炸的地下设施入口已被掩埋并浇筑水泥封闭。我们将继续监测伊朗当前或任何新领导层在授权核武器计划方面的动向，”加巴德在准备好的证词中写道。
这些言论——似乎淡化了伊朗在21天前开始的打击前对美国或其盟友构成的任何迫在眉睫的核威胁——在加巴德当面陈述的声明中被省略了。
当被问及遗漏原因时，她将其归因于时间问题。
CNN的詹妮弗·汉斯拉为本文撰稿。
https://www.cnn.com/
Inside Trump’s most difficult war decision yet: whether to put boots on the ground in Iran
2026-03-21T09:00:33.727Z / CNN
In near-daily briefings with top military officials at the White House, President Donald Trump has reviewed options that include sending American troops into Iran.
The decision whether to go ahead is perhaps his most difficult of the war since US strikes began February 28.
For many Trump allies in Washington, the deployment of thousands of US troops to the Middle East would mean the swift end of their public support for the war— and likely threaten the administration’s ability to deliver the hundreds of billions of dollars in supplemental funding the White House will soon seek.
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But for Trump, fully realizing his objectives and mitigating the war’s fallout could require sending in American troops, a legacy-defining endeavor the president — while not ruling it out — tried to downplay this week.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
As Trump’s war in Iran enters its fourth week, pressure is mounting for a better picture of how the conflict will conclude. The economic repercussions have led many of Trump’s Republican allies, staring down a tough political road to the midterm elections in November, to urge him to find a way out.
Exactly how that happens is still largely unknown. Trump appeared to tacitly acknowledge the misgivings about his endgame on Friday evening when he said he would “consider winding down” the war soon, even as new Marine units were headed toward the region.
According to the timeline Trump and his advisers have offered publicly, the four-week mark — which arrives next Saturday — opens the window for the planned ending point to the military campaign. Trump has declared the mission “ahead of schedule” and suggested it would be over more quickly than anyone realizes.
But a week out from that target, the ambitious goals he set at the start of the war remain a work in progress, even as the after-effects of the war continue to cascade and its price tag —both in dollars and lives — continues to rise.
Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz has sent economic shockwaves around the world and led to criticisms that Trump’s decision to attack Iran wasn’t fully thought through.
US officials are furiously trying to avert a potential monthslong closure. They privately acknowledge that reopening the key waterway is a problem without a clear solution— and dependent at least in part on what lengths Trump is willing to go to force the Iranian regime’s hand, multiple administration and intelligence officials told CNN.
There is also a growing divergence between US and Israeli objectives, raising questions over the endgame each country envisions. Behind closed doors, Israel understands Trump’s political timeline is considerably shorter than the one Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for ending the conflict.
“There’s no doubt that his political clock is shorter and sharper than ours,” one Israeli official told CNN of Trump. “The moment he decides to stop, he’ll stop, say, ‘We won,’ and that’s it.”
The Israeli system is preparing for the possibility that it “could all end in an instant,” the official said.
Trump told CNN on Friday he believed Israel would be ready to end the war when he was.
“I think so,” he said, adding: “We want more or less similar things. We want victory, both of us. And that’s what we’ve got.”
Declare victory and move on
As the conflict widens, Trump has bristled this week at what he sees as negative media coverage of the operation’s successes, decrying news stories he believes accentuate the war’s costs.
And he lashed out this week at NATO allies he deemed insufficiently enthusiastic about joining an effort to patrol the Strait of Hormuz, declaring after a short-lived attempt at coalition building that he didn’t actually need anyone’s help.
“I have never heard him so angry in my life,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top proponent of the war in Iran, wrote on social media.
Many GOP lawmakers have told CNN they’ve been so far satisfied with the administration’s secret briefings. But several of them said Trump and his team will soon need to go public with their strategy — or risk backlash from their own voters.
“All along, we’ve been assured that we wouldn’t have a situation where we would have any significant number of troops on the ground,” New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican who frequently speaks with Trump, told CNN, adding that US boots on the ground would be his breaking point. “The president has assured us that it won’t. And I’m going to take him at his word, obviously. But we don’t want endless wars.”
While Trump continues to weigh potential options that would include sending US troops into Iran, he has also been speaking regularly to Republican allies who have encouraged him to take a different approach: declare victory and move on, according to one source familiar with those conversations.
Some prominent Hill Republicans have told Trump he could reasonably frame the war as a success once the military accomplishes the objectives Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has outlined during recent Pentagon press briefings: destroying Iran’s navy, missile capability and industrial base.
While that scenario would not completely neutralize threats related to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and proxy forces, some Trump allies believe the alternative of escalating the conflict and putting US boots on the ground is a recipe for disaster, the source added.
“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the Commander in Chief maximum optionality,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “It does not mean the President has made a decision, and as the President said in the Oval Office yesterday, he is not planning to send ground troops anywhere at this time.”
The US and Israel have found significant success in wiping out Iran’s missile and drone arsenals, and have sunk most of its naval vessels, according to Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday the US had struck more than 7,000 targets in Iran.
But a principal objective, the one Trump cites most often as the reason for the war, is so far unrealized: that Iran no longer have the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Its highly enriched nuclear fuel remains buried deep underground, and Iranian expertise at creating it is still alive.
“The fundamental advantage Iran has is that knowledge can’t be bombed away,” said a European diplomat. “They have a lot of very bright scientists who’ve been paid for by the government to do nothing else but work on the nuclear file for decades,” said a European diplomat. “There is a bedrock of knowledge that cannot be taken out with B-2s.”
There are signs the administration is preparing for all contingencies, even though Trump has yet to make a decision on sending troops into Iran.
Thousands more US Marines and sailors are heading towards the Middle East. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Boxer Amphibious Ready Group have had their deployment rerouted and accelerated and are now expected to go to the Middle East, two US officials told CNN.
Among the operations that officials have weighed privately: capturing Iran’s Kharg Island — an economic lifeline for Iran that handles roughly 90% of the country’s crude exports — or effectively wiping out the island’s oil infrastructure. The US has been striking military infrastructure on the island, which is viewed inside the administration as a key leverage point that could potentially force Iran’s submission to agree to reopening the Strait.
What would U.S. troops on the ground in Iran look like?
6:19 • Source: CNN
What would U.S. troops on the ground in Iran look like?
6:19
“[The attack on] Kharg Island was a signal, but the question is what is [the president] willing to do to make the Iranians go, ‘This is no longer in our interest to keep this as a chokepoint.’ Because that’s what it’s going to take,” a US intelligence official told CNN.
White House officials believe taking Kharg Island would “totally bankrupt” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, one official said, and could potentially lead to a swift end of the war. But many inside the administration are wary of such a move, particularly given it would require a significant number of ground troops to achieve.
A separate ground operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium could potentially be even riskier. The canisters of enriched uranium, which Tehran could potentially use to build a nuclear bomb, are believed to be buried underneath rubble left behind after the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites last June.
Any mission to retrieve the buried uranium would be incredibly dangerous. Visiting Washington this week, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said the “barrels and cylinders” of material could “theoretically” be moved. However, “if there was a direct hit” during military operations, it would risk contamination, he said.
The question of sending ground troops into Iran has rattled some Republicans.
Wisconsin GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, told CNN he has specifically advised the administration against any boots on the ground: “I don’t want to see it.”
“I think we need to find an exit strategy as fast as possible,” added Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee. “I don’t want to put Americans on the ground out there in any shape, form or fashion.”
GOP Rep. Mike Flood, who stood at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware earlier this month at the dignified transfer of six fallen soldiers who were killed in Kuwait, including a sergeant from his state, said he doesn’t “want families to go through that” and hopes the war is nearly over.
“Everybody wants this over,” Flood said.
When Trump first heard about Israeli plans to strike Iran’s critical South Pars gas field this week, it did not immediately raise any alarm bells. Instead, US officials viewed the attack as a way to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to people familiar with the plans.
It was only after — as Iran was retaliating with strikes on a natural gas facility in Qatar — that Trump claimed the United States “knew nothing about this particular attack.”
By the next morning, Trump said he’d issued a warning to Netanyahu against further strikes on Iran’s energy facilities.
“It’s coordinated,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “But on occasion he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it. And so we’re not doing that anymore.”
Trump and Netanyahu have spoken nearly every day since the war began. While the Trump administration has tried to set specific military goals for the war, Netanyahu’s objectives appear far more open-ended, as Israel assassinates a growing list of Tehran’s top leaders.
In testimony to Congress this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard acknowledged the objectives laid out by the US and Israeli governments for the war in Iran “are different,” adding that she does not know if Israel would support making a deal with Iran.
“We can see through the operations that the Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership,” Gabbard said at the House Intelligence Committee’s Worldwide Threats hearing Thursday.
Several Western officials told CNN they believed Israel’s targets so far speak to a strategy of causing the state of Iran to collapse by strangling its financial lifelines and toppling its leadership structures. That appears different from Trump’s narrow set of military objectives.
Trump has also worried that attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure could cause further spikes in energy costs. And he’s said that images of burning oil fields in Iran will only remind Americans that the war is causing gas prices to rise.
“No doubt there are phenomenal operational achievements,” said one former senior Israeli security official. “But to paraphrase politics, ‘It’s the strategy, stupid.’”
“Iran isn’t Gaza. It’s a giant state with endless leadership and command reserves. Toppling the regime could take months or years,” the former official went on. “There’s a risk that today’s gains will fade soon.”
Part of the challenge, said another former senior Israeli official, is that neither the US nor Israel have planned for different leadership in Iran.
“The CIA and Mossad haven’t truly invested in this over the past 15-20 years. It was secondary to other priorities,” the former official told CNN. “In prioritizing nuclear, missiles, Iran, Hezbollah, or regime change, other goals took precedence.”
In an article in the Economist this week, Oman’s Foreign Minister – who served as negotiator in the now-scuttled talks – argued that “America has lost control of its own foreign policy.”
“It should now be clear that for Israel to achieve its stated objective will require a long military campaign to which America would have to commit troops on the ground, opening a new front in the forever wars which President Donald Trump previously vowed to end. This is not what America’s government wants. Nor do its people, who certainly do not see this as their war,” Badr Albusaidi wrote.
An increasing concern among many American allies is that a future Iranian regime will make efforts to sprint towards developing a nuclear weapon because they view the ongoing military campaign as a threat to their existence, sources told CNN.
Even if Trump decides to send ground troops into Iran to remove the highly enriched uranium, the knowledge to develop a future nuclear program would likely remain.
US allies have advocated against such a ground operation, sources said. Still, Trump’s own thinking on the topic remains murky.
Whether or not US ground troops are sent into Iran, the Iranian regime’s potential decision to kickstart operations to develop a nuclear weapon after the war concludes is weighing heavily on US allies.
“After all of this, why wouldn’t they sprint towards a nuclear bomb?” said a regional diplomat of the Iranian regime. “That was a concern we had even before the US launched this war.”
In his own congressional testimony this week, CIA director John Ratcliffe said Iran has the same amount of enriched uranium today as it did before Operation Midnight Hammer, the US bombing run in June. Gabbard said in her prepared remarks there have been no Iranian efforts since those strikes to rebuild uranium enrichment operations.
“The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement. We continue to monitor for any early indicators on what position the current or any new leadership in Iran will take with regard to authorizing a nuclear weapons program,” Gabbard wrote in her prepared remarks.
Those remarks — which appeared to downplay the possibility Iran posed any imminent nuclear threat to the US or its allies before the strikes began 21 days ago — were left out of the statement Gabbard delivered in person.
Asked about the omission, she chalked it up to an issue of time.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
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