分析： 亚伦·布莱克，2小时前，发布于 2026年3月17日，美国东部时间下午1:44
无论人们对伊朗战争的战略和道德智慧持何种看法，无可争议的是，唐纳德·特朗普总统对此的评论一直令人困惑、前后矛盾且相互抵触。这常常让人感觉，这位领导着这场战争的人对细节既不太了解，也缺乏好奇心。
周一的情况比以往任何一天都更能体现这一点。
在两场公开露面中，特朗普都坚称自己不需要顾问来帮助做决策。然而，他却将伊朗对其海湾邻国发动袭击这一备受预期的回应（那些顾问肯定会提前告知他这一点）描述为“无人能够预料”。
而特朗普并非只说过一次这样的话。他现在以一种相当怪异的方式反复强调这一点，这让人更加质疑：这位刚刚在中东发动战争的人，是否真的理解他所采取行动的含义。
特朗普称不需要顾问
在白宫与肯尼迪中心董事会成员的会议上，有人问特朗普，他的顾问是否告诉他油价会在多长时间内保持高位。
“我不需要顾问来告诉我这些；我自己就清楚，”总统回答道。
随后，在呼吁盟友帮助确保霍尔木兹海峡安全时，特朗普暗讽英国首相基尔·斯塔默想要与其团队商议决策。
“你知道，英国首相昨天告诉我，‘我正在与我的团队会面以做出决定。’我说，‘你不需要和你的团队开会。你是首相，你可以自己做决定——为什么你必须和你的团队开会来弄清楚你是否要派遣扫雷舰给我们，或者派遣一些船只？’”
（周二，特朗普突然改口，声称他不需要盟友在霍尔木兹海峡问题上提供帮助。）
但他关于自己独立决策的言论，仅仅是最新的一个迹象，表明决策未必是基于专业知识做出的。
特朗普曾表示，战争将在“我凭直觉感觉到的时候”结束。
当被追问其关于伊朗即将袭击美国目标的未经证实的说法时（已知的美国情报中并无此类信息），特朗普和白宫方面反复强调总统的直觉。白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·利维特称这是特朗普的“感觉……基于事实”。
将伊朗对海湾邻国的袭击描述为“不可想象”
同样在周一，特朗普再次对伊朗对其邻国的报复行动表示惊讶。他声称“没有人”预料到伊朗会在美国和以色列发动袭击后，对其海湾邻国发动攻击。
“所以他们袭击了卡塔尔、沙特阿拉伯、阿联酋、巴林、科威特，”特朗普说。“没有人预料到这一点。我们感到震惊。”
这番言论令人费解，以至于福克斯新闻的彼得·杜西在随后的白宫活动中追问特朗普。他问特朗普是否对没有人向他通报这种可能性感到惊讶。
总统加倍并三次强调：
“没有人。没有人。不，不，不，不，”特朗普说。“最顶尖的专家——没有人认为他们会袭击——他们虽然不算友好国家，但也算中立。”
他接着补充道：“没有专家会说这种情况会发生。这不是‘哎呀，你本应该知道吗？’的问题。”
战争开始后不久，特朗普在接受美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）的杰克·塔珀采访时也说了类似的话，称伊朗对其海湾邻国的袭击是“最大的意外”。
但这本不应令人惊讶
然而，在现实世界中，这几乎不应该是一个意外。
事实上，这一情况被广泛预期——以至于相关报道中已有提及，伊朗官员也多次对此发表评论。
战争开始前大约一周，英国广播公司（BBC）列举了美国打击伊朗后的七种情景。第4种是“伊朗通过攻击美国军队、阿拉伯邻国和以色列进行报复”。
“这种情况极有可能发生，”该部分开头写道。
大约同时，《外交事务》杂志（Foreign Affairs）描述了伊朗升级冲突的可能性，指出“伊朗可能会认真考虑直接针对海湾阿拉伯国家的能源基础设施进行打击。”
早在1月份，半岛电视台（Al Jazeera）就指出，海湾国家担心对伊朗发动打击可能会“引发伊朗在其领土上进行报复”。
伊朗甚至多次对此进行评论。一位不愿具名的伊朗高级官员在1月份告诉路透社，“德黑兰已告知地区国家，从沙特阿拉伯和阿联酋到土耳其，如果美国将目标对准伊朗，这些国家的美军基地将遭到攻击。”
就在战争爆发前几天，伊朗副外长马吉德·塔赫特-拉万奇被美国国家公共广播电台（NPR）问及德黑兰是否“准备攻击其邻国”。
塔赫特-拉万奇否认了这一点，但当时显然有很多人认为这是可能发生的。
就连国防部长彼得·赫格斯（Pete Hegseth）也承认了这一点。一周前，他表示伊朗对其邻国的袭击让五角大楼有些措手不及，但与特朗普不同的是，他坚持认为“我们知道这是一种可能性”。
特朗普长期以来轻视专业知识和情报的价值
那么，该如何理解这一切呢？
这并非首次暗示特朗普可能不具备人们期望一位总统在这种情况下应有的全部信息。
甚至他周二的言论也指向这一点。他周一声称“有几个”国家会帮助确保霍尔木兹海峡安全，但周二又承认其他国家不会提供帮助。
他此前还错误地声称一些海湾国家已经开始站在美国和以色列一边作战。
上周，特朗普解释他认为伊朗可能对一所女子学校的袭击负有责任时称：“我对此了解得还不够多。”但这起备受争议的袭击——目前正在调查中——初步调查结果表明，责任可能在美国一方。
尽管声称对该事件“不了解”可能是出于自身利益，但特朗普最新关于战争的言论并非如此。他的新言论只是让他看起来脱离实际、准备不足。
但回顾特朗普如何谈论他获取信息的方式，这并不奇怪。
我常常想起2016年特朗普接受《华盛顿邮报》采访时的言论，他声称自己做出正确决策“除了我已有的知识和‘常识’之外，几乎不需要其他信息，因为我有很多常识和商业能力。”
他补充说，他对专家没什么用处，因为“他们只见树木不见森林。”
也许特朗普真的相信这一点，并据此行事——即使在他做出最重大的总统决策，在中东这场不可预测的战争中冒着美国人生命危险的情况下，也是如此。
Trump’s alternate reality on the Iran war
Analysis by Aaron Blake, 2 hr ago, PUBLISHED Mar 17, 2026, 1:44 PM ET
However one feels about the strategic and moral wisdom of the Iran war, it’s indisputable that President Donald Trump’s commentary on it has been confusing, inconsistent and contradictory. It often looks a lot like the man leading the war effort isn’t terribly clued in on or curious about the details.
Monday, more than any day so far, epitomized this.
Across a pair of public appearances, Trump assured that he didn’t need advisers to help him make decisions. Then he cast a widely anticipated Iranian response of attacking its Gulf neighbors — something those advisers surely would have told him about — as something that nobody could possibly have anticipated.
And Trump didn’t just say this once. He’s now said it repeatedly, in rather bizarre fashion, which is raising more questions about whether the man who just launched a war in the Middle East truly understood the implications of what he was undertaking.
Trump says he doesn’t need advisers
At a meeting with the Kennedy Center board at the White House, Trump was asked whether his advisers had told him how long gas prices will remain elevated.
“I don’t need advisers to tell me that; I know what it is,” the president said.
President Donald Trump sits with, from left, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and outgoing president of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees Richard Grenell, as Trump speaks during a lunch with the board in the East Room of the White House on Monday.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Then, while calling on allies to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, Trump took a shot at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for wanting to deliberate with his team.
“You know, the prime minister of the UK, United Kingdom, yesterday told me, ‘I’m meeting with my team to make a determination.’ I said, ‘You don’t need to meet with the team. You’re the prime minister, you can make your own — why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you’re going to send some minesweepers to us or to send some boats?’”
(Trump on Tuesday reversed himself and suddenly said he didn’t need allies’ help with the Strait of Hormuz.)
But his comments about making decisions on his own are merely the latest indicator that decisions aren’t necessarily being made based on expertise.
Trump has said the war will end when “I feel it in my bones.”
And when pressed on his unsubstantiated claims that Iran was about to strike US targets — something no known US intelligence showed — Trump and the White House have repeatedly pointed to the president’s intuition. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called it Trump’s “feeling … based on fact.”
Casting Iran’s attacks on Gulf neighbors as unthinkable
Also on Monday, Trump again expressed surprise at Iran’s retaliation against its neighbors. He claimed that “nobody” anticipated that Iran would respond to the US-Israeli strikes by attacking its Gulf neighbors.
“So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait,” Trump said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”
The comment was puzzling enough that Fox News’ Peter Doocy pressed Trump on it at a later White House event. He asked whether Trump was surprised that nobody had briefed him on this possibility.
A steeplejack assesses the damage to a building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on March 12, after the building was hit by a reported drone strike.
AFP/Getty Images
The president doubled and then tripled down.
“Nobody. Nobody. No, no, no, no,” Trump said. “The greatest experts — nobody thought they were going to hit — they were, I wouldn’t say friendly countries, they were like neutral.”
He then added: “There was no expert that would say that was going to happen. It’s not a question of like, gee, should you have known?”
Trump said something similar to CNN’s Jake Tapper shortly after the war began, calling Iran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbors “the biggest surprise.”
But it shouldn’t have been surprising
Yet there is virtually no world in which this should have been a surprise.
Indeed, this was widely anticipated — so much so that it’s been written about and Iranian officials have repeatedly commented on it.
About a week before the war began, the BBC laid out seven scenarios if the US struck Iran. No. 4 was “Iran retaliates by attacking US forces, Arab neighbours and Israel.”
“This is highly likely,” that section began.
Around the same time, Foreign Affairs magazine described the possibility of Iranian escalation, noting that “Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly.”
Back in January, Al Jazeera noted that Gulf nations feared that a strike on Iran could “trigger an Iranian retaliation on their soil.”
Iran even repeatedly commented on it. An anonymous senior Iranian official told Reuters in January that “Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that U.S. bases in those countries will be attacked” if the US targeted Iran.
And just days before the war began, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi was asked by NPR whether Tehran was “prepared to attack its neighbors.”
Takht-Ravanchi denied it, but it was clearly a possibility on the tips of lots of people’s tongues at the time.
Even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has acknowledged it. A week ago, he said Iran’s strikes on its neighbors caught the Pentagon somewhat off-guard, but unlike Trump, he insisted that “we knew it was a possibility.”
Trump has long dismissed the value of expertise and intelligence
So what to make of all this?
It’s hardly the first suggestion that Trump might not have all the information you would hope a president would have in this situation.
Even his comments Tuesday pointed in that direction. While he claimed Monday that “a couple” of countries were going to help with the Strait of Hormuz, he acknowledged Tuesday that other countries weren’t going to help.
He also previously falsely claimed that some Gulf countries had begun fighting on the United States’ and Israel’s side.
And last week, Trump explained his suggestion that Iran may have been responsible for a strike on a girls’ school by saying, “I just don’t know enough about it.” But this was a highly controversial strike — and the subject of an ongoing investigation — that preliminary findings suggest the United States is responsible for.
While claiming ignorance about that might have been self-serving, that’s not the case with Trump’s latest claims. His new comments about the war just make him look out of the loop and unprepared.
But if you look back at how Trump has talked about his information practices, it shouldn’t be too surprising.
I often think of a 2016 interview Trump gave to the Washington Post in which he claimed he reached the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”
He added that he had little use for experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Perhaps Trump really believes that and has acted accordingly — even as he’s undertaken the most serious of presidential decisions, to risk American lives in an unpredictable war in the Middle East.