战争已是伊朗神棍们最好的统治手段【英语学习】

信达

Why Tehran sees war as a survival strategy

德黑兰为何将战争视为生存策略

作者：Hooman Abedi 胡曼·阿贝迪

Iran International 伊朗国际

the negotiating table has become a losing field.

谈判桌已经变成了一个失败的战场

Iran’s leadership is edging toward a war scenario not because diplomacy is necessarily collapsing, but because confrontation is increasingly seen as the least damaging option for a ruling system under intense internal and external pressure.

伊朗领导层正走向战争局面，这并非因为外交必然崩溃，而是因为在巨大的内外压力下，对抗越来越被视为对统治体系损害最小的选择。

While Iran’s foreign minister is right now visiting Oman for bilateral talks with the United States, in Tehran’s calculus, negotiations now promise steady erosion. War, by contrast, offers a chance – however risky – to reset the balance.

尽管伊朗外长目前正在阿曼与美国举行双边会谈，但在德黑兰看来，谈判只会不断削弱双方的实力。相比之下，战争提供了一个机会——尽管风险巨大——来重塑双方的平衡。

This marks a shift from the Islamic Republic’s long-standing view of war as an existential threat. Today, senior decision-makers appear to believe that controlled confrontation may preserve the system in ways diplomacy no longer can.

这标志着伊斯兰共和国对战争的看法发生了转变，不再像过去那样将战争视为生存威胁。如今，高层决策者似乎认为，可控的对抗或许能够以外交手段无法企及的方式维护现有体制。

That belief explains why war is no longer unthinkable in Tehran, but increasingly framed as a viable instrument of rule.

这种信念解释了为什么战争在德黑兰不再是不可想象的，而是日益被视为一种可行的统治手段。

At the core of this shift lies a stark assessment: the negotiating table has become a losing field.

这一转变的核心在于一个严峻的评估：谈判桌已经变成了一个失败的战场。

This is not because an agreement with Washington is impossible. It is because the framework imposed by the United States and its allies has turned diplomacy into a process of cumulative concession.

这并非因为与华盛顿达成协议是不可能的，而是因为美国及其盟友强加的框架已经将外交变成了一个不断累积让步的过程。

When nuclear limits, missile restrictions, regional influence, and even domestic conduct are treated as interlinked files, Iranian leaders see talks not as pressure relief, but as strategic retreat without credible guarantees of survival.

当核限制、导弹限制、地区影响力，甚至国内行为被视为相互关联的问题时，伊朗领导人将谈判视为战略撤退，而不是缓解压力，而没有可信的生存保障。

From Tehran’s perspective, diplomacy no longer buys time. It entrenches vulnerability.

在德黑兰看来，外交手段已不再能争取时间，反而会加剧自身的脆弱性。

In that context, confrontation begins to look less like recklessness and more like a way out of a narrowing corridor.

在这种情况下，对抗看起来不再像是鲁莽行事，而更像是摆脱困境的出路。

War as a domestic instrument of control

战争作为一种国内控制手段

Why war? Because war is the one scenario in which the Islamic Republic believes it does not necessarily lose.

为什么要发动战争？因为战争是伊斯兰共和国认为它不一定会输的唯一局面。

Domestically, the regime faces its most severe legitimacy crisis in decades.

在国内，该政权正面临几十年来最严重的合法性危机。

Widespread repression, the killing of protesters, economic collapse, and a society increasingly resistant to fear-based governance have eroded the state’s traditional tools of control.

普遍的镇压、对抗议者的杀戮、经济崩溃以及社会对基于恐惧的治理方式日益增长的抵制，已经削弱了国家传统的控制手段。

Under these conditions, war serves a powerful political function. It rewrites the rules of governance.

在这种情况下，战争发挥了强大的政治作用。它改写了治理规则。

In wartime, dissent can be reframed as collaboration with the enemy. Protest becomes sabotage. Opposition becomes a national security threat.

在战时，异议可能被重新定义为与敌人勾结。抗议变成了破坏活动。反对派被视为国家安全威胁。

Emergency logic compresses public space and legitimizes measures that would provoke backlash in peacetime.

紧急状态逻辑压缩公共空间，并使那些在和平时期会引发强烈反弹的措施合法化。

For the Islamic Republic, war is not primarily imagined as a catastrophe imposed from outside. It is a mechanism that restores hierarchy, discipline, and fear at home.

对伊斯兰共和国而言，战争并非主要被视为外来强加的灾难，而是一种在国内重建等级制度、纪律和恐惧的机制。

This logic is not unique to Iran, but it has taken on renewed urgency as the Islamic Republic confronts a society it can no longer reliably intimidate into submission.

这种逻辑并非伊朗独有，但随着伊斯兰共和国面对一个它再也无法可靠地恐吓使其屈服的社会，这种逻辑变得更加紧迫。

Externally, Tehran’s calculations rest on another assumption – that the United States wants to avoid a prolonged war.

从外部来看，德黑兰的考量基于另一个假设——美国希望避免旷日持久的战争。

The experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with Washington’s cautious posture toward the war in Ukraine, have reinforced the belief that the US lacks the political appetite for a long, grinding conflict.

阿富汗和伊拉克的经验，加上华盛顿对乌克兰战争的谨慎态度，更加强化了这样一种看法：美国缺乏进行一场旷日持久、旷日持久的冲突的政治意愿。

From Tehran’s vantage point, even a military strike would likely be limited.

从德黑兰的角度来看，即使是军事打击也可能是有限的。

Airstrikes, cyber operations, or narrowly defined attacks are forms of pressure the Islamic Republic believes it can absorb.

空袭、网络行动或特定类型的攻击，都是伊斯兰共和国认为它可以承受的压力形式。

This feeds into a core element of Iran’s survival doctrine: without foreign ground forces, the system is not collapsible.

这符合伊朗生存理论的核心要素：没有外国地面部队，这个体系就不会崩溃。

Military action that stops short of sustained ground involvement is therefore seen as manageable.

因此，不涉及持续地面介入的军事行动被认为是可控的。

More than that, Iranian leaders believe escalation can be shaped by exporting costs across the region.

不仅如此，伊朗领导人还认为，可以通过向该地区输出成本来控制局势升级。

By threatening US allies and regional partners, Tehran calculates that a drawn-out confrontation would quickly become politically and economically unattractive for Washington.

德黑兰认为，通过威胁美国的盟友和地区伙伴，旷日持久的对抗很快就会让华盛顿在政治和经济上失去吸引力。

In this reading, a limited war could push human rights concerns off the global agenda, expose divisions among Western allies, unsettle energy markets, and ultimately force a return to narrower negotiations.

从这个角度来看，一场有限的战争可能会将人权问题从全球议程中移除，暴露西方盟友之间的分歧，扰乱能源市场，并最终迫使各方回归到范围更窄的谈判。

This strategy, however, rests on a dangerous assumption: control.

然而，这种策略建立在一个危险的假设之上：控制。

Wars that begin with expectations of containment rarely remain contained.

以遏制战事为目标的战争，很少能真正被遏制住。

In a volatile and heavily armed region, escalation chains are hard to manage, and actions Tehran defines as deterrence may be read in Washington as crossing red lines.

在一个动荡不安且武装力量强大的地区，局势升级链难以控制，德黑兰所定义的威慑行动在华盛顿可能会被解读为越过红线。

Still, the trajectory is clear.

不过，发展轨迹是清晰的。

The Islamic Republic has concluded that it loses at the negotiating table, but may endure – or even regain leverage – in sustained tension.

伊朗伊斯兰共和国已经得出结论，它在谈判桌上会失败，但在持续的紧张局势中，它可能会坚持下去，甚至重新获得筹码。

That belief explains why war is no longer treated as a last resort, but increasingly as a calculated, if perilous, component of its survival strategy.

这种信念解释了为什么战争不再被视为最后的手段，而是日益成为其生存战略中经过深思熟虑但又充满危险的组成部分。