Defeatists on the Left, Pollyannas on the Right
Neither the press's defeatism nor Trump supporters' triumphalism accurately captures the military reality of the ongoing Iran war.
本文分析了媒体对伊朗战争的两种极端看法：左翼的失败主义和右翼的盲目乐观。文章指出，尽管美国和以色列多次声称已重创伊朗的导弹能力，但伊朗总能迅速重建。作者认为，无论是悲观还是乐观的叙事都未能完全捕捉战争的复杂性，并强调了推翻伊朗政权才是解决威胁的根本途径，但目前时机未到。文章最后指出，虽然战争尚未结束，但已削弱了伊朗政权，并展现了美国在捍卫自身利益方面的决心。
The Iran war met instantly with defeatism from the press, and nothing since has been able to dislodge its prevailing negativity. A counternarrative has arisen among supporters of the war that stresses how much the U.S. and Israel have already accomplished. This may be no more illuminating.
本文描述的“伊朗战争”及其时间线（如2024年10月、2025年6月、2026年3月）是虚构的。它以新闻报道的形式，探讨了对未来潜在冲突的媒体叙事偏见和战略挑战，而非真实发生的历史事件。
In his address to the nation Wednesday, President Trump said the U.S. has achieved “victories like few people have ever seen before.” But he acknowledged there’s work left to be done. The war’s goal is to remove the threat arising from Iran’s capabilities—missiles, nuclear, drones, navy. The U.S. and Israel also seek to create conditions that give the Iranian people a chance to overthrow the regime, but that’s up to Iranians after the bombing stops. For now, the optimists tell us to focus on the missiles. They’re being destroyed, along with Iran’s capability to make more.
文章中提到的“特朗普总统”及其对伊朗的强硬政策，反映了美国政府长期以来对伊朗核计划和地区影响力的担忧。美国的目标通常包括阻止伊朗获得核武器、削弱其军事能力以及支持伊朗内部变革力量。
This would be more persuasive if we were hearing it for the first time. Instead, it’s the third time. After Israel’s retaliation against Iran on Oct. 26, 2024, the ballistic-missile program was supposed to have been set back substantially. Israel’s strike on planetary mixers, critical equipment for missile production “means they now have to calculate how much ammo they have,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me in December 2024, “because it’ll take them several years to resuscitate it.
If only. Seven months later, in June 2025, Mr. Netanyahu argued, correctly, that Iran’s missile program had been reconstituted and posed an existential threat. On the eve of the 12-day war, Israel believed Iran had 2,500 or 3,000 ballistic missiles and would soon be able to mass-produce more. Iran would possess some 6,000 by 2026 and 10,000 in 2028, the Israelis feared.
After the 12-day war, the Israelis again assessed that they had lastingly degraded Iran’s missile program. Whereas in October 2024 Israel had struck only 14 missile-related targets, in June 2025 it hit several hundred and assessed that it had destroyed half or two-thirds of Iran’s 400 missile launchers. Again, Iran’s missile program was said to have been set back by years.
Without those strikes, we would be in a far worse place now. But with China’s help, Iran rebuilt after June. Within months, its missile program became cause for a new war. Israel estimates Iran again had 2,500 missiles before this latest war, along with 470 launchers, and production was accelerating. So far, Iran has launched more than 1,000 missiles—and paid a price.
Israel alone has struck more than 2,000 missile-related targets this time, far more than in June. Iran’s entire defense-industrial base is being leveled. That’s new, and it’s a real achievement that will make any Iranian recovery far more difficult. But when we’re told for a third time in 17 months that the missiles and launchers are dwindling and can’t be rebuilt for years, we ought to retain some skepticism. What happens after the war when the first Chinese cargo ship carries key missile-fuel precursors to Iran? Who’s stopping it?
The commonly cited 90% reduction in Iranian missiles fired since the first day is nothing to sniff at. The problem is we heard that statistic on March 5. Less encouraging is Iran’s sustained rate of missile and drone launches over the past few weeks.
Iran’s navy might have been hit hardest of all. But even there, the remarkable count of more than 155 ships sunk or damaged isn’t decisive when Iran needs only small speedboats, mines and drones to disrupt shipping.
霍尔木兹海峡是连接波斯湾和阿曼湾的战略性水道，全球约五分之一的石油供应经此运输。伊朗多次威胁封锁该海峡，这将对全球能源市场造成巨大冲击，导致油价飙升，并可能引发国际干预。
The only lasting way to end the danger from Iran’s missiles, drones and boats is to topple the regime that turns them into an unacceptable threat. But an uprising is supposed to wait. “Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home,” Mr. Trump told Iranians on day one. “Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government.
The war isn’t finished, so there can be no expectation of mass protests, optimists explain. Yet waiting for the bombs to stop doesn’t entirely make sense either. Without air cover from the U.S. or Israel, wouldn’t Iranian protesters again be massacred in the streets?
伊斯法罕和福尔多是伊朗重要的核设施所在地，涉及铀浓缩活动。国际社会对伊朗核计划长期存在担忧，并实施了多轮制裁。文章中提及的“提取浓缩铀”是极具风险的军事行动，旨在解除伊朗的核威胁。
If the U.S. exits the war as part of a deal to restore energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, it couldn’t then provide overt protection to Iranians. Mr. Trump might even have to stop Israel from doing so. Maybe it’s better to end without a formal Hormuz deal after all.
Mr. Trump still has powerful options to escalate. Each, however, carries substantial risk. Holding Kharg Island, Iran’s oil-export terminal, would endanger U.S. troops without necessarily forcing Iran’s hand in the Strait of Hormuz. Damaging the island’s oil infrastructure would raise prices further. Extracting Iran’s enriched uranium from beneath Isfahan and Fordow could be a long and dangerous special-forces mission.
None of this means the defeatist narrative is correct. The war hasn’t “dragged on,” as we’ve heard almost from the start. The military timetable was four to six weeks, and we’re in week five. A few more weeks wouldn’t make the war a “quagmire,” as it has ludicrously been called already. It would simply reflect the reality that Iran triggered the other nuclear option, blocking the Strait of Hormuz, at great long-term cost to the regime. Even so, it hasn’t matched the energy shock caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
One effect of Iran’s Hormuz gambit might have been to keep the U.S. in the war, giving it and Israel the time to smash more regime targets, lately including key economic assets. Already the region is doing all it can to adapt to Iran’s martyr-thy-neighbor strategy, investing heavily in air defenses and diverting supply away from the strait. These efforts will intensify. Iran’s behavior today is preparing the conditions and building the alliance to thwart the regime tomorrow.
Israel’s targeting of regime leaders has been stunningly successful, and there’s no reason to think Iran’s less-experienced, more-ideological sudden replacements will be more effective. Iran’s regime didn’t fall on the spot, but it is being weakened on all fronts, and it could well succumb weeks or months after the war under the weight of its own failures.
The worst-case military scenarios thankfully have been far off. “Thousands of Americans would die,” Tucker Carlson said. But since Iran took its big swing on March 1 to kill seven U.S. soldiers, it hasn’t been able to repeat. Six more Americans died after two aircraft collided. So far—please, God—the regime has failed to kill any more Americans.
Wars are often clarifying, and all now can see U.S. aircraft overwhelming Russian and Chinese equipment. The world can also see that Mr. Trump doesn’t “always chicken out” or restrict himself to single-day missions. Good. Adversaries should know that the president is willing to deploy force, even at a political cost, in sustained defense of U.S. interests.
Yet so much that matters, from the nuclear stockpile and the Pickaxe Mountain potential enrichment site to the Strait of Hormuz and the regime itself, still hangs in the balance. That’s why neither defeatism nor triumphalism is convincing. The war’s first minute was its most important, felling the supreme leader and some 40 of his top men. But its first month didn’t decide the strategic outcome. As Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, there’s good reason to fight on.