By his own account, the military operation that Donald Trump mounted against Iran over the weekend was an unqualified success. Saturday’s covert raid, in which U.S. bombers dropped a series of massive, tailor-made bombs onto fortified Iranian sites, left Tehran’s nuclear capability “completely and totally obliterated,” the president proclaimed in a triumphant White House address late that night.
唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在周末对伊朗进行的军事行动凭借自己的说法取得了不合格的成功。周六的秘密突袭，其中美国轰炸机将一系列庞大的量身定制的炸弹扔到了强化的伊朗遗址上，使德黑兰的核能力“完全而完全消除了”，当晚深夜宣布。
The reality is more complex. Although the operation achieved an impressive level of tactical success, with a swarm of warplanes penetrating Iran unchallenged following a long, undetected flight from Missouri, it will be far harder than the president has suggested to reliably evaluate the damage inflicted on Iran’s ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The information that’s emerged so far suggests to experts that Iran’s nuclear capacities have been set back significantly but that the two-decade atomic standoff with Iran is by no means over.
现实更为复杂。尽管该行动取得了令人印象深刻的战术成功水平，但在从密苏里州进行了长时间未被发现的飞行之后，一群战机穿透了伊朗的战机，这将比总统建议可靠地评估对伊朗生产核武器造成的损害的难以可靠地评估损害。迄今为止出现的信息向专家们表明，伊朗的核能力已经大大降低了，但是与伊朗的两个十年的原子对峙并没有结束。
In the 48 hours since the strikes, Trump’s top advisers have given differing answers about the fate of Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium, which, satellite imagery suggests, Iranian authorities may have relocated prior to the strikes. Iranian leaders, meanwhile, have given no indication that they are ready to surrender the nuclear program. Facing the likelihood of ongoing U.S. and Israeli attacks, they may be more likely to make the long-feared decision to try to race toward a bomb.
自罢工以来的48小时内，特朗普的顶级顾问就伊朗富裕的铀库存的命运给出了不同的答案，卫星图像表明，伊朗当局可能在罢工之前已搬迁。同时，伊朗领导人没有迹象表明他们准备投降核计划。面对正在进行的美国和以色列袭击的可能性，他们可能更有可能做出长期的决定试图朝炸弹竞争。
Read: The United States bombed Iran. What comes next?
阅读：美国轰炸了伊朗。接下来是什么？
“This is probably not the end of the program, and certainly not the end of their aspirations,” Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and a top Pentagon official for the Middle East under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, told us.
“这可能不是该计划的终结，当然也不是他们愿望的终结，”前美国驻以色列大使，中东大使丹尼尔·夏皮罗（Daniel Shapiro）在巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）和乔·拜登（Joe Biden）总统的领导下是中东的顶级官员。
He said that, prior to Saturday’s strikes, Iran had been “days away” from being able to enrich to weapons-grade levels, and had been working to shorten the time required to turn its material into a bomb. “That means that absent the U.S. and Israeli strikes, we would be sitting on a knife’s edge, which was not acceptable,” said Shapiro, who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Iranian leaders, however, may now judge it necessary to abandon United Nations restrictions and rush toward weaponization to survive. “And so there’s the other side of the knife’s edge, which has the potential to be even worse,” Shapiro said.
他说，在周六的罢工之前，伊朗已经“有几天的时间”，从能够丰富武器级的水平，并一直在努力缩短将其材料变成炸弹所需的时间。夏皮罗说：“这意味着缺席美国和以色列的罢工，我们将坐在刀的边缘，这是不可接受的。”然而，伊朗领导人现在可以判断有必要放弃联合国限制，并急于武器化以生存。夏皮罗说：“因此，刀的边缘的另一面有可能变得更糟。”
Since Saturday, Trump has shown little tolerance for those who have criticized the wisdom of what the Pentagon has dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer.” The president’s allies are now seeking to unseat Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who complained about the sidelining of Congress’s constitutional authority to declare war. Trump has also pushed back against skeptical coverage in the press. “The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” he posted today on Truth Social.
自周六以来，特朗普对那些批评五角大楼被称为“午夜锤子”的智慧的人几乎没有宽容。总统的盟友现在正在寻求肯塔基共和党人托马斯·马西（Thomas Massie）的代表，他抱怨国会宪法宣布战争的权力。特朗普还反对新闻界的持怀疑态度。“我们在伊朗打击的遗址被完全摧毁，每个人都知道，”他今天在“真相社交”上发布。
His ire has even been directed at some in his own administration. According to one outside adviser, Trump has groused in private about the early assessments from those, including Vice President J. D. Vance and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine, who allowed for the possibility that the Iranian sites were anything other than completely wiped out. “The president simply wants a black-and-white success,” the adviser told us. (Like others interviewed for this story, the adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters).
他的愤怒甚至针对他自己的政府中的一些人。据一位外部顾问称，特朗普对包括副总统J. D. Vance和联合酋长董事长丹·凯恩（Dan Caine）在内的早期评估表示敬意，后者允许伊朗遗址完全被淘汰。顾问告诉我们：“总统只想取得黑白成功。”（就像其他关于这个故事采访的人一样，顾问在讨论敏感问题的匿名条件下讲话）。
Read: American democracy might not survive war with Iran
阅读：美国民主可能无法与伊朗战争
Trump has also indicated to senior aides and allies that he would prefer Saturday’s strikes be a one-off rather than a sustained campaign against a country that, though weakened after 10 days of extensive bombing by Israel, retains substantial military power, according to the outside adviser and a senior White House official. The president likes the idea of a single, awe-inspiring, nuclear-facility-destroying show of force, and has expressed reluctance to go much beyond that. He has ruled out sending American troops on the ground and is mindful of the divide in his political base about a new foreign entanglement. But he has also left open the possibility of authorizing further attacks if Iran mounts any successful counteraction against the United States.
特朗普还向高级助手和盟友表示，他希望周六的罢工是一次性的，而不是对一个国家的一场持续的运动，尽管这一国家经过10天的大量轰炸以色列，但仍保留了大量的军事力量，该国虽然削弱了，但仍保留了大量的军事力量。总统喜欢一个单一的，令人敬畏的，令人震惊的核能侵犯武力的想法，并表示不愿超越这一点。他排除了将美军派往地面上的，并注意到他的政治基础上关于新的外国纠缠的鸿沟。但是，如果伊朗对美国进行任何成功的反击，他也打开了授权进一步攻击的可能性。
“He’s basking in the success and ability to do these things,” another outside adviser told us. “But I don’t get the impression that his appetite for prolonged military engagement has changed at this point.”
另一位外部顾问告诉我们：“他为成功和做出这些事情的能力而兴奋。”“但是我没有印象他在这一点上他对长期军事参与的兴趣已经改变。”
Iran today launched a series of missiles toward a major U.S. air base in Qatar, but U.S. military officials reported no significant damage. Afterwards, Trump derided Iran’s “very weak response” and announced that 13 out of 14 missiles had been shot down, while the 14th had been off target. The events suggest that, rather than escalating, military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran is winding down. In the early evening, Trump posted that the U.S., Israel, and Iran have reached agreement on a cease-fire that, he said, will bring “an official END to THE 12 DAY WAR.”
伊朗今天向卡塔尔的美国主要空军基地发射了一系列导弹，但美国军事官员没有明显损坏。之后，特朗普嘲笑伊朗的“非常弱”的反应，并宣布14枚导弹中有13枚被击落，而第14导弹已经脱离了目标。这些事件表明，美国和伊朗之间的军事对抗而不是升级，而是结束了。他说，在傍晚，特朗普宣布，美国，以色列和伊朗就停火达成了同意，他说，这将使“ 12天战争的正式结束”。
Before Iran’s counterattack today, Trump had indicated privately that he would be open to letting the exchange conclude so long as no Americans were killed, either at military bases in the Middle East or in the United States at the hands of a sleeper cell, according to the senior White House official and one of the outside advisers. They told us that Trump will have less patience for American military casualties or damage to American facilities than he did five years ago, when Iran struck at a U.S. base in Iraq following Trump’s decision to target the military leader Qassem Soleimani. Since the latest flare-up began, Trump has tried, with a series of social-media posts—including an incendiary one about “regime change”—to dissuade Tehran from taking action that would require a forceful response.
据白宫高级官员和外部顾问之一称，在伊朗的反击之前，特朗普曾私下表示，只要没有美国人在中东的军事基地，或者在卧铺牢房的手中，他将愿意让交易所结束。他们告诉我们，特朗普对美国的军事伤亡或对美国设施的损害的耐心要少于五年前，当时伊朗在特朗普决定以军事领导人Qassem Soleimani为目标之后，伊朗在伊拉克的美国基地袭击了美国。自从最新的爆发开始以来，特朗普一直在尝试进行一系列社交媒体帖子（包括关于“政权变更”的煽动性媒体），以阻止德黑兰采取行动，需要采取有力的回应。
“If Iran wants the U.S. to be done, then the U.S. will be done,” an American official told us, summarizing Trump’s desire to take further military action only if Tehran were to pull off a significant retaliatory strike. A former U.S. intelligence officer told us that Iran’s counterstrike today was more symbolic than anything: It appeared aimed at “showing that they have not been completely cowed and that they can demonstrate to their own people, to the region, to their proxies, that they can defend Iranian sovereignty.”
一位美国官员告诉我们：“如果伊朗希望美国完成，那么美国就会完成。一位前美国情报官告诉我们，今天的伊朗反击比任何事物都更具象征意义：它的目的是“表明他们还没有完全牛仔，他们可以向自己的人民，该地区，代理人表现出来，他们可以捍卫伊朗主权。”
Since Saturday, military and intelligence officials have been rushing to collect information about the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and its remaining capability. One senior Israeli official—whose country has perhaps the most granular knowledge of Iran’s program and the personnel involved in it—told us that the impact remains unclear but that Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been entirely destroyed. Assessing the damage is especially difficult because the country’s known centrifuges, at Fordo and Natanz, are buried underground. Although the Air Force’s B-2 pilots aimed their munitions at ventilation shafts and officials boasted of a clean hit, the extent of destruction is impossible to know from satellite imagery; international observers have also been unable to access the site. Not even the Iranians may know for sure how much, if anything, remains.
自周六以来，军事和情报官员一直在急于收集有关伊朗核计划损失及其剩余能力的信息。一位以色列高级官员（当时国家可能是伊朗计划和参与其中的人员的最刻薄的知识），我们认为影响尚不清楚，但伊朗的核设施并未被完全摧毁。评估损害尤其困难，因为该国在Fordo和Natanz的已知离心机被埋葬在地下。尽管空军的B-2飞行员将弹药瞄准了通风轴，而官员则吹嘘了一场干净的命中，但从卫星图像中不可能知道破坏的程度。国际观察家也无法访问该网站。甚至没有伊朗人可能会确定剩下多少（如果有的话）。
The relative dearth of information offers a sharp contrast to the war in Iraq, where the U.S. occupation that followed the 2003 invasion provided the U.S. military with an opportunity for an up-close study of its own weaponeering. After the initial wave of bombing, American troops’ ability to travel freely across Iraq allowed them to conduct inspections of the effects of explosives dropped from the sky. In some cases, U.S. troops climbed into the wreckage of bombed buildings and discovered that the destruction inflicted by U.S. munitions had fallen far short of what military calculations had predicted.
相对缺乏的信息与伊拉克战争形成了鲜明的对比，在2003年入侵之后的美国占领为美国军方提供了对自己的武器武器的近距离研究的机会。在最初的轰炸浪潮之后，美军自由穿越伊拉克的能力使他们能够检查从天上掉下的炸药的影响。在某些情况下，美军爬上了被轰炸的建筑物的残骸，发现美国弹药造成的破坏远远远远远远远远远远远远远远远远没有进行军事计算的预测。
One former senior military official told us that the lessons in “weapons effects” drawn from that conflict also informed the development of newer, more potent bombs. That includes the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or GBU-57, which is the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bomb developed specifically for Iran’s underground nuclear sites. “The thing was built for that target,” the former official said. Fourteen of them were dropped over the weekend.
一位前军事官员告诉我们，这场冲突中汲取的“武器效应”的教训也告知了更新，更有效的炸弹的发展。其中包括大规模的军械穿透器或GBU-57，这是专门为伊朗地下核场地开发的30,000磅重的“破坏掩体”炸弹。前官员说：“这是为该目标建造的。”周末，其中有14人被丢弃。
But without American personnel on the ground, and with the possibility that international inspectors will never reach the damaged sites, the Trump administration must rely on a combination of satellite imagery, intercepted Iranian communications, and human intelligence to assess the impact. Although Israel has demonstrated a remarkable penetration of Iran’s scientific and military establishment over the past year, even it may not know the location and condition of Iran’s enriched-uranium supply or the condition of its centrifuges and weapons-making components. No one knows, either, whether Iran, as it suggested earlier this month, can fall back on a third enrichment site it purports to have created, in addition to the damaged facilities at Fordo and Natanz.
但是，如果没有美国人员在场，并且国际检查员永远不会到达受损地点，特朗普政府必须依靠卫星图像，拦截的伊朗通讯和人类情报来评估影响。尽管以色列在过去一年中表现出了伊朗科学和军事机构的显着渗透，但即使它也不知道伊朗富集 - 裔苏联供应的位置和状况，也不知道其离心机和武器制造成分的状况。除了本月早些时候建议的那样，除了在Fordo和Natanz受损的设施外，还没有人知道，伊朗是否可以回到它所创建的第三个富集地点。
After 10 days of Israeli strikes on Iran’s air- and missile-defense sites and other security installations, the country’s conventional military capability has been seriously weakened. But as Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard Kennedy School, noted to us, the long-term impact on the nuclear program is likely smaller. Meanwhile, any hope of a negotiated solution in which Iran agrees to give up enrichment is likely diminished.
在以色列对伊朗的空气和导弹防御地点以及其他安全设施进行了10天的罢工之后，该国的常规军事能力严重削弱了。但是，正如哈佛肯尼迪学校的核专家马修·邦恩（Matthew Bunn）对我们所指出的那样，对核计划的长期影响可能较小。同时，伊朗同意放弃丰富的任何谈判解决方案的希望都可能减少。
Iran has long been divided between hard-liners who place high value on attaining a bomb and others who favor negotiations, sanctions relief, and global reintegration. Now the political power of the latter faction “has been destroyed by these strikes,” Bunn said. “There’s quite a number of people who are saying, Damn, we really need that nuclear weapon now.”
长期以来，伊朗一直在努力，他们在获得炸弹方面具有很高价值的艰难者，而其他人则赞成谈判，制裁救济和全球重返社会。Bunn说，现在后一个派系的政治权力“被这些罢工摧毁了”。“有很多人说，该死，我们现在真的需要那种核武器。”
