2026-03-01 06:59:48
2026年2月28日，据报道伊朗发生爆炸后，德黑兰上空升起一缕烟柱。以色列称其对伊朗发动了“先发制人打击”，同时耶路撒冷响起警报，手机通知警告存在“极其严重的威胁”。| 图片由Mahsa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images提供
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周六早些时候，美国和以色列对伊朗发动了袭击，标志着一场范围广泛且可能持续的战争的开始。特朗普总统表示，此次行动旨在消除“迫在眉睫的威胁”，摧毁伊朗的导弹和海军力量，并最终促使伊朗民众推翻政府。他后来声称此次袭击已导致最高领袖阿亚图拉阿里·哈梅内伊及其他高级领导人丧生。此后，伊朗对美国、以色列及盟友目标进行了报复性导弹袭击。
经过数周的军事准备，所有迹象都表明这将是一场规模远超近期冲突的行动。从政治角度来看，这一时刻似乎标志着特朗普的重大转变。多年来，他一直谴责伊拉克战争，甚至把自己定位为“和平”候选人，如今却支持他长期批评的政权更迭战争。过去盟友曾称赞他避免发动新战争，包括像JD Vance这样的政界人士，而与曾支持伊拉克战争的鹰派人物如希拉里·克林顿形成对比。如今，他的战争记录与一场目标和后果仍不明确的战争发生了碰撞。
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Early Saturday, the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran, marking the start of what appears to be a far-reaching and open-ended war. President Donald Trump said the operation was meant to eliminate an “imminent threat,” destroy Iran’s missile and naval forces, and ultimately encourage Iranians to overthrow their government. He later said the strike had killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with other senior regime figures.
Iran has since responded with retaliatory missile attacks on US, Israeli, and allied targets across the region. After weeks of military buildup, all signs point to a campaign far larger than recent clashes.
Politically, the moment seems to mark a sharp reversal for Trump.
After years of condemning the Iraq war and even branding himself the “peace” candidate, he has now embraced the kind of regime change conflict he long criticized. Allies once praised him for avoiding new wars, including politicians like JD Vance, while contrasting him with past hawks like Hillary Clinton, who infamously backed the Iraq war as a senator. That record now collides with a war whose goals and consequences remain deeply unclear.
Follow here for all of our latest coverage and analysis.
2026-03-01 04:25:00
2026年2月28日，伊朗德黑兰上空升起一团烟雾。| Ehsan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
这则新闻出现在《Logoff》日报通讯中，旨在帮助你了解特朗普政府的动态，同时避免政治新闻占据你的生活。欢迎订阅。
编辑注：2026年2月28日 下午5:30 ET。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在周六下午宣布，伊朗最高领袖阿亚图拉·阿里·哈梅内伊在空袭中身亡。以下故事是在2月28日早些时候发布的，尚未包含哈梅内伊死亡的消息。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：美国正在与伊朗开战。
各位读者，你们一定已经看到了新闻：周六清晨，特朗普政府在中东地区持续数周的海军集结后，对伊朗发动了重大袭击。正如冲突报道所常见的那样，我们对事件的了解仍然有限，更不用说未来的发展了。试图实时跟进这些事件可能会让人感到像在火 hose 中饮水一样吃力，而且这可能是一场持续数周甚至数月的战争，而非几天或几小时的短暂冲突。鉴于此，以下是目前你需要知道的关键信息：
发生了什么？
周六凌晨1点左右，美国和以色列的第一波袭击针对多个伊朗城市，包括首都德黑兰。据报道，数百人丧生，许多人生还。伊朗随后对区域内的多个目标进行了反击，包括以色列以及拥有美国基地的海湾国家：卡塔尔、阿拉伯联合酋长国、巴林和科威特。截至目前，尚未有美国人员伤亡的报告。此外，有消息称伊朗已封锁霍尔木兹海峡，该海峡是全球约20%石油运输的必经之路。
特朗普政府为何发动此次行动？
正如我的同事扎克·比厄姆今天早上所报道的，特朗普发动战争的借口令人困惑。本周大部分时间，战争的可能性似乎取决于美国与伊朗就伊朗核计划（以及其弹道导弹和对代理人组织如真主党的支持）进行的谈判。然而，周六特朗普将冲突提升到了更高的层面，他在社交媒体上发布的一段视频中表示：“伊朗政权47年来一直在高喊‘致死美国’，并发动了无休止的流血和大规模屠杀的行动。我们不能再忍受了。”他还承诺要推翻伊朗政权，这与他今年早些时候威胁要介入反政府抗议活动的言论一脉相承，称“你们的自由时刻已经到来”。
大局如何？
周六的袭击是特朗普在2026年前两个月第二次使用军事力量改变国际规范。但与委内瑞拉不同，这次看起来是一场全面战争，而非短暂的军事行动。伊朗周六对海湾国家的反击也增加了这场冲突进一步升级为更广泛地区战争的可能性。特朗普在周六称美国的行动是一场“大规模且持续的军事行动”，并且随着一艘航母战斗群已部署在该地区，另一艘正前往途中，美国似乎已为可能持续数周的冲突做好准备。
至于这场战争会如何发展，甚至特朗普本人可能也无法预见。正如路透社周六报道的，袭击前，简报人员曾告诉总统，这将是一次高风险、高回报的行动。
好了，是时候“Logoff”了。
我们通常会给你一个点击链接，但在这样的日子里，这可能很难做到。因此，我鼓励你以自己喜欢的方式“Logoff”，无论是去散步、看电影，还是做其他事情。一如既往，感谢你的阅读。我们将在周一带来更多内容。
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Editor’s note, February 28, 5:30 pm ET: President Donald Trump announced on Saturday afternoon that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the airstrikes. The following story was published earlier on February 28, before the news of Khamenei’s death.
Welcome to The Logoff: The US is at war with Iran.
Hi readers, by now I’m sure you’ve seen the news: Early on Saturday morning, the Trump administration, after weeks-long naval buildup in the Middle East, launched a major attack on Iran.
As always with conflict reporting, there’s much we still don’t know about what has happened, much less what will come next. Trying to follow it all in real time can feel like drinking from a firehose, and this is likely to be a story of weeks and months, not days or hours.
With that in mind, here’s what you need to know right now:
What happened? The first wave of attacks by the US and Israel, which began around 1 am Eastern time on Saturday morning, targeted multiple Iranian cities, including the capital, Tehran. Hundreds are reportedly dead and many more injured.
Iran has responded by striking at targets throughout the region, including Israel and a number of countries in the Persian Gulf that are home to US bases: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
So far, there have been no US casualties reported. There are also reports that Iran has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil passes as it makes its way into the global market.
Why is the Trump administration doing this? As my colleague Zack Beauchamp reported this morning, Trump’s justifications for war have been bewilderingly incoherent.
For much of the week, it has seemed like the possibility of war turned on the outcome of US-Iran negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program (and its ballistic missile arsenal and support for proxy forces like Hezbollah).
On Saturday, though, Trump cast the conflict in grander terms: “For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder,” he said in a video posted to social media. “We’re not gonna put up with it any longer.”
Trump is also promising regime change in Iran, on the heels of his threat earlier this year to intervene on behalf of anti-regime protesters; “the hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said on Saturday.
What’s the big picture? Saturday’s strikes are Trump’s second norms-shattering use of military force abroad in just the first two months of 2026. But unlike Venezuela, this looks to be a full-scale war, not a brief operation already over by the time many Americans are tuning in.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Gulf states on Saturday also raise the possibility that this could further escalate into a broader regional conflict.
Trump on Saturday described the US campaign as a “massive and ongoing operation,” and with one aircraft carrier group already in the region and another on the way, the US appears to be positioned for a potential multi-week conflict.
What that will look like as it plays out, not even Trump may know: As Reuters reported Saturday, briefers told the president ahead of the attack that it would be a high-risk, high-reward operation.
We love to give you a link to click here, but that can be hard to do on days like today. So instead, I’ll just encourage you to log off in whatever way you prefer, whether that’s going for a walk, watching a movie, or something else.
As always, thanks for reading. We’ll be back on Monday with more.
2026-03-01 00:21:24
2026年2月28日，以色列军队对伊朗发动第二波空袭，城市中心升起浓烟。| Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu 通过 Getty Images 提供
在决定再次联合以色列对伊朗发动大规模空袭，并呼吁推翻伊朗政府后，唐纳德·特朗普的外交政策似乎又回到了他过去十年批评前任总统所走的道路。美国再次发动了这种以推翻政权为目标的战争，而这种战争对美国国家安全的实际影响却并不明确。
在2016年大选中，特朗普曾因批评伊拉克战争而与共和党其他候选人区分开来，甚至称其为总统历史上最糟糕的决定之一。而在2024年大选中，他又以“非干预主义”姿态参选，批评华盛顿的外交政策共识，认为其愿意派美国士兵赴海外作战。他的“美国优先”支持者和共和党都急于将他塑造为“和平”候选人，引领反对鲁莽军事主义的更大运动。
2023年，时任参议员JD·万斯在支持特朗普时发表了一篇题为《特朗普最好的外交政策？不发动战争》的社论，称“也许这是一个很低的标准，但这反映了特朗普前任的鹰派立场以及他们盲目追随的外交政策体系。”后来，作为副总统候选人，万斯在播客中表示，“我们的利益非常明确，就是避免与伊朗开战”，并称特朗普会抵制以色列施加的任何开战压力。
尽管特朗普第二任期的外交政策并不完全是鸽派，但他的军事行动通常以短促、目标明确、伤亡较少为特点，这与过去几十年的“国家建设”式战争形成对比。万斯曾告诉《华盛顿邮报》，虽然对伊朗发动攻击可能是防止其获得核武器的必要手段，但“数年内看不到结束的中东战争”几乎不可能发生。他之前还表示，与前任总统不同，特朗普的战争更有效率，不会陷入长期、无休止的冲突。
特朗普在周六警告称，“勇敢的美国英雄可能会失去生命，我们可能会有伤亡。”这与他一贯的不愿承认决策可能带来的负面影响的风格相悖。
自吉米·卡特总统以来，每一位美国总统都曾下令在中东地区进行某种军事行动，而自乔治·W·布什总统以来，他们都在承诺从该地区的冲突中抽身，以专注于更重要的事务。2024年11月，白宫发布的国家安全战略文件强调了西方 Hemisphere 和边境安全，而非海外冲突，这是对前任政策的重大转变。文件中提到中东地区的冲突仍是主要问题，但“当前的问题远没有媒体所描述的那么严重”。文件指出，伊朗作为该地区最不稳定的力量，已因“午夜锤”行动和自2023年10月7日以来以色列的行动而“大大削弱”。
尽管如此，美国仍无法摆脱对中东的干预。支持政权更迭的人认为，这是改变伊朗现状的历史性机会，尽管军事干预可能带来不稳定，但伊朗政权本身已持续几十年造成地区动荡，现在正是将其推翻的最佳时机，因为其国内和国际影响力都处于低谷。
然而，这种逻辑在21世纪已被美国人广泛拒绝。而最清楚这种拒绝的人，正是其最大的政治受益者：唐纳德·特朗普。
With the decision to once again launch major airstrikes on Iran, in conjunction with Israel, and call for the overthrow of the Iranian government, President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has come full circle. The US has once again launched the sort of regime change war, where the actual stakes for US national security are far from clear, that he has spent more than a decade deriding his predecessors for pursuing.
During the 2016 election, Trump initially distinguished himself from his Republican rivals with his willingness to call the war in Iraq a mistake — in fact he called it possibly the worst decision in presidential history. During the general election, Trump was viewed by many as less hawkish than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who infamously backed the Iraq war as a senator. In 2024, he once again ran as a non-interventionist, blasting the Washington foreign policy consensus for its willingness to send American troops to die in foreign wars.
Along the way, his “America First” supporters and the Republican Party eagerly sought to canonize him as the “peace” candidate leading a broader movement against reckless militarism. In endorsing Trump in 2023, then-Sen. JD Vance wrote an op-ed with the title “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.” It was, Vance wrote, “perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed.” Later, as his running mate, Vance said on a podcast that “our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran” and that Trump would resist any pressure from Israel to join one.
Trump’s second-term foreign policy has not exactly been dovish — it has already featured a major air campaign in Yemen, an earlier round of airstrikes against Iran, the decapitation of the Venezuelan regime, a less discussed but much larger air campaign in Somalia, and the threat to use force to annex Greenland.
A small number of “America First” supporters, most notably former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, broke with him over these policies and accused him of abandoning his campaign promises. Among the many non-interventionists in Trump’s orbit who have stuck by his side, however, the goalposts appear to have shifted a bit. Even if Trump’s foreign policy has been highly interventionist, they’ve argued, the interventions have been short, sharp campaigns with limited objectives and — most importantly — few US casualties. It’s an approach more akin to the “gunboat diplomacy” of centuries past than the costly nation-building projects of the post 9/11 years.
Vance told the Washington Post on Thursday that while an attack on Iran might be necessary to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, there was no chance of a “Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight.” He has previously said that the difference between Trump’s wars and those of previous presidents was that those presidents were “dumb” and got the United States embroiled in long, drawn-out, unwinnable fights.
It’s far from clear how this conflict will play out, but the comparisons to Iraq in 2003 are hard to avoid. Just as George W. Bush’s administration promoted — untrue, as it turned out — claims about Iraq’s weapons programs to justify the intervention, the Trump administration over the past several weeks has been hyping unproven or just plain false claims about Iran’s ability to build an intercontinental ballistic missile or a nuclear weapon. (The latter is also hard to square with Trump’s repeated assertion that last summer airstrikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.)
The Israeli military has described the airstrikes as a “preemptive attack,” another echo of the Iraq era. As with “Operation Midnight Hammer” last summer, the bombs started falling at a time when the US and Iran were still engaged in ongoing negotiations over the country’s nuclear program — just yesterday it appeared some tentative progress was being made.
Trump’s calls for Iranians to rise up against their regime actually echoes Bush’s father, who called for Iraqis to “take matters into their own hands” during the 1991 Gulf War. Tens of thousands were later killed when the US ultimately opted to leave Saddam Hussein’s regime in place, leaving the dictator free to put down a Kurdish uprising with attack helicopters.
Just a few months ago, in a speech in Saudi Arabia, Trump decried decades of “neocons” and “interventionists” for “intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” wrecking them in the process. In December, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told a national security conference that the US military “will not be distracted by democracy building interventionism, [or] undefined wars” but would instead focus on the country’s “practical, concrete interests.”
With strikes already targeting Iranian leadership compounds, including those used by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a regime change war. “All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump told the Washington Post early Saturday.
It’s true that the United States has not committed ground troops to this operation and given the force posture it has arrayed in the region in recent weeks, seems very unlikely to. It’s also worth noting that just because Trump is talking about the overthrow of the regime now, the operation could very well stop short of that goal. He has shown in the past that he is very willing to walk away from military operations with limited wins, even with underlying issues left unresolved.
But that doesn’t mean US troops won’t be at risk from retaliatory strikes from a desperate Iranian regime. Iranian retaliation against US assets and allies in the region already appears larger and more widespread than during last summer’s operation. Trump, who is typically reluctant to acknowledge any potential downsides to his decisions, jarringly warned on Saturday that “the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties.”
Every US president since Jimmy Carter has ordered some sort of military operation in the Middle East and every president since George W. Bush has done so while vowing to extricate the US from the region’s conflicts to focus on larger priorities.
In its National Security Strategy released by the White House in November, the administration made a major break with its predecessor by emphasizing the Western Hemisphere and border security above overseas conflicts. The brief section on the Middle East stated that “Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe.” Iran, the region’s most destabilizing force, the regime noted, “has been greatly weakened” by Midnight Hammer as well as Israeli actions since October 7, 2023. Overall, the document concluded, with greater US energy independence, “America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.”
And yet, here we are. Advocates for regime change argue that this is is a historic moment of opportunity to change things for the better in Iran; that while the risk of destabilization from military intervention is real, that the Iranian regime itself has been a source of destabilization for decades, and that it’s worth taking action now to remove it at a moment when it’s at its weakest, both domestically and internationally.
It’s hard to begrudge those who’ve lived under this repressive regime or its violent regional proxies from hoping for a better outcome; that a push from US and Israeli airpower is all that’s needed to topple this house of cards and make space for a better Iran and a better Middle East.
But this is the kind of logic Americans have heard before in the 21st century and have, for very good reasons, largely rejected. And the person who, one would think, understands that rejection the best, is its main political beneficiary: Donald Trump.
2026-03-01 00:07:43
一段来自唐纳德·特朗普总统在Truth Social账号上发布的视频截图显示，他在2026年2月28日于佛罗里达州帕拉迪索海滩发表讲话，谈及对伊朗的军事行动。据安纳多卢通讯社/Getty图片社报道，美国在周六发动了一场没有明确目标的对伊朗的战争，而没有人清楚其真正原因。过去几周，美国一直在该地区集结军事力量，估计有40%至50%的可部署空军力量部署在该地区。然而，特朗普政府始终拒绝给出任何明确的公开理由，解释为何要对伊朗开战、战争将如何进行，以及胜利的标准是什么。
战争开始后，特朗普发表了一段八分钟的讲话，解释了开战的原因。他列举了伊朗政府的反美行为、支持恐怖组织的历史以及其核计划（他之前曾声称去年空袭已“彻底摧毁”了伊朗的核计划）等不满之处。他说：“鉴于这些原因，美国军队正在进行一场大规模、持续的行动，以防止这个邪恶、极端的独裁政权威胁到美国和我们的核心国家安全利益。”从特朗普的描述来看，这次军事行动比他之前对伊朗的打击更加开放和广泛，没有明确的单一目标，如削弱其核计划或处决某位高级将领。相反，他提到要开展一场“大规模”行动，旨在阻止伊朗“威胁美国”。
但问题在于，这些目标到底意味着什么？真正的目标是什么？特朗普愿意为此付出多大的代价？起初，特朗普似乎暗示战争将集中于削弱伊朗的军事能力，比如“摧毁其导弹工业”、“歼灭其海军”以及“确保伊朗无法获得核武器”。但后来他提到最终目标是政权更迭。他说：“今晚我要对伟大的伊朗人民说，你们自由的时刻即将到来。当我们将结束这一切时，你们将接管你们的政府，它将属于你们。”这些目标截然不同。伊朗的导弹工业和核计划并不是国内镇压的工具。如果特朗普的目标是让伊朗人民起来反抗，那么这将需要一场更广泛的军事行动，针对伊朗的地面部队，包括参与今年早些时候屠杀数千名和平示威者的警察和巴吉尔民兵组织。
显然，要彻底推翻伊朗政权，可能需要某种形式的地面入侵，而且规模相当大。因此，问题在于：这是一场针对伊朗军事能力的大规模轰炸行动，还是一场更广泛的政权更迭战争？或者特朗普只是在虚张声势，几天的轰炸后就会撤退，最终不会带来实质性的改变？从特朗普的讲话或美国政府的任何官方声明中，我们根本无法得出明确的答案。
总的来说，特朗普的战争行动缺乏明确的目标和战略，这与美国以往的战争方式截然不同。以往，美国发动大规模军事行动时，总统通常需要向公众解释其行动，并获得国会授权。然而，特朗普的战争却显得混乱且毫无章法，其决策过程更像是独裁者随意发动战争。这种做法令人担忧，因为这可能导致美国陷入一场没有明确目标和退出策略的长期冲突，而这样的冲突可能以各种方式走向失败。
正如印第安纳大学-布卢明顿分校的美国-伊朗关系专家侯赛因·巴奈（Hussein Banai）所写：“这场战争不过是一场毫无目标的政府胡乱出击，一个不知道或不在乎伊朗未来该是什么样子的混乱政府所发动的战争。”这种决策方式与2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的决策有相似之处。在入侵之前，许多可信的观察家认为这不会发生。因为俄罗斯没有明显的安全或经济利益可以证明入侵乌克兰的合理性，而普京却坚信乌克兰是一个虚假的国家，其人民是被从祖国夺走的俄国人。这种信念使他相信乌克兰会轻易屈服，而他的追随者也无力反驳他。在没有权力约束的情况下，普京发动了一场后来被证明是灾难性的战争。
俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的教训表明，以个人魅力或绝对权力为核心的独裁政权往往做出错误的决策。然而，美国似乎无意中创造了一个拥有类似战争权力的总统职位。这正是美国陷入一场无明确目标和退出策略的长期冲突的原因，而这种冲突可能以各种方式走向失败。
Early Saturday, the United States launched an open-ended war on Iran. And nobody really knows why.
For the past several weeks, the United States has been amassing forces in the area — with an estimated 40 to 50 percent of its entire deployable air fleet in the region. Throughout this time, the Trump administration has refused to give any kind of straightforward public justification for the buildup: a clear accounting of why they were considering war with Iran, what such a war would entail, or what victory would look like.
After the war began, President Donald Trump gave an eight-minute speech explaining why the war had begun. The speech ran through a series of grievances with the Iranian government: its anti-Americanism, its history of supporting terrorist groups, and its nuclear program (which he had previously claimed to have “completely obliterated” after airstrikes last year).
“For these reasons,” Trump said, “the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
This looks, from Trump’s description, to be a more open-ended military operation than his previous attacks on Iran. There is no specific defined singular objective, like setting back the nuclear program or killing an individual general. Instead, he speaks of a “massive” campaign dedicated to the broad goal of preventing Iran “from threatening America.”
But what does that mean? What is the real objective here, and how far is he willing to go to get there?
At first, Trump seemed to suggest that the war will focus on Iran’s military capabilities: that the US would “raze their missile industry to the ground,” “annihilate their navy,” and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”
But later in the speech, he said the ultimate goal was regime change.
“To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
These objectives are fundamentally different.
Iran’s missile industry and nuclear program are not tools of domestic repression. If the goal is for the Iranian people to rise up, as Trump said, that would require a much more expansive military operation targeting Iran’s ground forces, including police and the Basij paramilitary involved in slaughtering thousands of peaceful protestors earlier this year. Most likely, a full toppling of the regime could not happen without some kind of ground invasion — and a significant one at that.
So which is it: a major bombing campaign targeting Iran’s military capabilities, or an even more expansive war of regime change? Or is Trump blustering, and a few days of bombing will give way to a climb down in which little ultimately changes?
It is literally impossible to say from Trump’s speech, or any other official communication from the US government.
All we know for sure is that Trump has announced what he described as a “massive” war for no clear reason — the result of a warmaking process that no longer follows constitutional procedure, and instead more closely resembles the way dictators make war on whims.
In the past, when the United States launched a large-scale military operation, presidents felt obligated to explain what they were doing. Even the 2003 Iraq war, one of the most confused and disastrously planned in US history, began with months of discussion of Iraq’s alleged WMD program and a congressional vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Nothing like this has happened with Trump’s Iran war.
It’s not just that his speech was confusing and contradictory: it’s that the administration had not, at any point in 2026, articulated a straightforward justification for its military buildup and threats of war against Iran.
That’s true both in public-facing communications and in private consultations with Congress. Just yesterday, Jack Reed — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee — said the White House’s thinking was a mystery.
“I have yet to see the administration define a very clear-cut objective of what they are trying to do by massing all these naval forces, and other forces, in the area,” Reed told my colleague Josh Keating during a Q&A at the Brookings Institution.
On one level, this is not a new problem. For the past two decades, presidents have amassed more and more power to use military force unilaterally. This began with George W. Bush’s expansive vision of the war on terror, but every subsequent president built on what he had started. Congress, stymied by partisan divisions, did little to try and claw its power back.
The only constraint on the 21st-century presidency’s warmaking powers, it appears, is the president’s own judgment. When undertaking military actions, Bush, Obama, and Biden all made the case publicly, arguing that major hostilities were within the president’s legal powers.
In Trump’s second term, though, the remaining few informal checks on the president’s warmaking powers have fallen by the wayside. Several second actions, ranging from the boat bombings in the Caribbean to the attack on Iran’s nuclear program last summer to the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in January, illustrate that the current approach to using force is basically “if we feel like it.”
Now, it appears, they feel like engaging in something much bigger than raids or small-scale bombing: an open-ended war against a country of 90 million, one that might be “merely” focused on destroying its military or could really be about regime change.
“This war is nothing short of a chaotic lashing out of an aimless administration that doesn’t know or care what it wants for Iran,” writes Hussein Banai, an expert on US-Iran relations at the University of Indiana-Bloomington.
The closest analogy to this kind of decisionmaking is not any previous American war. Rather, it recalls the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022.
Before that war started, many credible observers thought that it wasn’t going to happen. Invading Ukraine made no sense for Russia; there was no obvious security or economic interest that could justify the enormous risks associated with trying to annex an entire country. How could Putin, a calculating operative, possibly be so stupid?
The answer, we’ve learned since, is that the Russian president was exactly that stupid. Animated by a series of bizarre historic grievances, Putin had convinced himself that Ukraine was a fake country populated by people best understood as Russians stolen from their motherland. Such a country would, he thought, be a pushover — and the yes-men serving below him were incapable of contradicting the leader. With no constraints on his power, Putin was free to launch a war that has since proven to be a catastrophic quagmire.
The Russian invasion is an object lesson in why authoritarian states built around a charismatic or all-powerful leader tend to make bad decisions. But what we’ve done in the United States, seemingly by accident, is create a presidency imbued with the same warmaking powers.
And this is how the United States end up in an open-ended conflict with no clearly defined objective or exit strategy — and a million different ways it could go wrong.
2026-02-28 20:15:40
2026年2月28日，伊朗德黑兰发生爆炸后，升起了一股烟柱。|盖蒂图片社
美国总统特朗普在周六清晨宣布，美国和以色列对伊朗发动了袭击，目的是消除伊朗的“迫在眉睫的威胁”，摧毁其导弹工业，并消灭其海军，同时促使伊朗民众推翻政府。此次袭击是在该地区数周紧张局势升级之后发生的，而此前所有迹象都表明，这次行动可能比去年夏天更大、更广泛，甚至超出了大多数美国人所能接受的范围。目前，双方似乎都过于自信，认为自己能够取得胜利。
以下是几个关键问题，值得在接下来的日子里关注：
美国在中东的军事行动是什么？
特朗普于1月首次威胁对伊朗采取军事行动，当时伊朗国内因经济问题爆发抗议活动，并遭到神权政权的残酷镇压。然而，由于地区盟友和一些顾问的劝阻，以及当时美国在委内瑞拉进行重大行动，美军在该地区缺乏足够的力量来威慑伊朗的反击。如今情况已不同，美国已向该地区部署了两个航母打击群，每个打击群配有三艘驱逐舰，还有数艘水面舰艇，以及几乎肯定存在的核潜艇（位置未公开）。此外，还部署了数十架飞机，包括F-22和F-16战斗机以及侦察机，这是自2003年伊拉克战争以来，中东地区部署的最密集的空中力量。美国还努力恢复因伊朗导弹和无人机袭击而耗尽的防空系统。简而言之，分析人士认为，这足以支持一场持续数周的军事行动，而不仅仅是几天。
为什么会发生这一切？美国想要从伊朗得到什么？
这似乎是一个不断变化的目标。特朗普1月对伊朗的威胁是对抗议者被屠杀的回应，但抗议活动现已基本平息，无法挽回那些被屠杀的人。在袭击前，主要讨论的是伊朗的核计划。尽管美国6月的空袭严重破坏了伊朗的核计划（特朗普称其“被彻底摧毁”），但特朗普政府仍要求伊朗完全放弃核浓缩，这是制造核武器的必要过程。伊朗坚称其核计划是和平的，坚持拥有核浓缩的权利，尽管表示愿意做出一些让步，如稀释接近武器级的浓缩铀。美国还试图将谈判范围扩大到伊朗的弹道导弹计划以及其对地区代理人组织（如真主党和胡塞武装）的支持。伊朗对此极为抗拒。尽管舆论焦点在核武器上，但伊朗的弹道导弹可能才是此次危机的核心。这些导弹对以色列构成威胁，因为它们的射程可覆盖以色列。伊朗也将其视为自卫能力的关键。然而，最新的言论表明，美国的目标不是与伊朗达成协议，而是彻底消灭伊朗。特朗普上周表示，推翻伊朗政权是“最好的事情”，并敦促伊朗民众推翻政府。许多伊朗人可能同意，但特朗普并未说明他打算用什么来取代现有政权。
这场战争会是什么样子？
美国人可能会认为战争会像6月的“午夜锤行动”那样，是一系列相对短暂的袭击，很快就能结束。但这次情况可能不同。6月的战争主要是以色列发起的，美国只是参与其中，袭击了三个伊朗核设施，当时以色列已经取得军事优势，伊朗的报复也较为有限。而这次，美国从一开始就主导了行动，以色列也参与其中。据《华尔街日报》报道，特朗普政府考虑的行动可能包括一项针对伊朗数十名政治和军事领导人的打击行动，目标是推翻政府，或者一项仅针对伊朗核设施和弹道导弹设施的空袭。无论是哪种方式，这些行动都可能持续数周。当然，实际情况可能大不相同。在美军介入委内瑞拉之前，很少有人预测美国会仅仅逮捕该国总统，而保留其政权。6月伊朗对美军的报复也较为有限且事先有预警。但这次，伊朗领导人可能认为他们正在为生存而战，需要更强硬的回应。尽管其核计划可能已遭重创，但伊朗自去年夏天以来一直在努力重建其弹道导弹威慑能力，因此对美军基地、以色列以及美国在海湾的盟友发动报复的可能性很大。伊朗能造成多大损害仍是个未知数，但据称在12天的战争中，以色列的拦截导弹已接近耗尽，如果冲突持续更久，可能会遭受更多损失。此外，伊朗上周还进行了军事演习，暂时封锁了霍尔木兹海峡——这是全球31%海上原油运输的关键通道。
特朗普是否真的有理由发动战争？
美国政府不太可能向国会请求授权使用军事力量打击伊朗，也不会提供详细的法律依据。根据美国政府的评估，伊朗的核计划距离制造核武器还很远，而且美国不在伊朗导弹射程之内，因此很难证明存在“迫在眉睫的威胁”，从而允许总统在未经国会批准的情况下下令军事行动。过去包括特朗普政府在内的多个政府曾声称，有限范围和持续时间的军事行动不构成宪法意义上的“战争”，因此不需要国会授权。但许多法律学者并不认同这一观点。即使你认同，如果战争发展成一场大规模行动，也很难再找到正当理由。在国会中，代表罗·卡纳（D-CA）和托马斯·马西（R-KY）计划下周推动一项决议，要求政府寻求国会授权，但此前在特朗普政府下，这类努力并未成功。很可能，国会对特朗普发动战争的监督将进一步削弱。
战争前的骄傲
公平地说，特朗普在以往的军事行动中，如他在第一任期中击毙伊朗将军卡西姆·苏莱曼尼的行动，都成功地反驳了那些警告他可能陷入危险泥潭的批评者。但如果他真的考虑进行一场像最近报道中那样大规模的行动，或者试图推翻伊朗政权，这表明他可能变得过于自信，甚至考虑发动他一直批评前任总统所卷入的那种战争。目前，双方似乎都对战争的结果过于自信：美国相信自己可以随意打击伊朗而不受严重反制，而伊朗则相信自己能让美国承受如此大的痛苦，从而取得战略上的胜利，而不是在一年内经济、政治和军事都严重受损的情况下加速自身灭亡。双方的这种自信可能会导致许多人丧生。
President Donald Trump announced early Saturday morning that the US and Israel had launched an attack on Iran, saying the goal was to eliminate an “imminent threat” from Iran, “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy,” and for Iranians to overthrow their government.
The bombing comes after weeks of buildup in the region, and all indications before the strikes suggested it will be a larger and more extensive campaign than what we saw last summer — or than most Americans are probably prepared for.
And at the moment, both sides seem dangerously confident they would prevail.
Here are a few key questions about the recent buildup to keep in mind for the days ahead:
Trump first threatened new military action against Iran in January, promising “help is on the way” when protests over economic conditions broke out throughout the country and were brutally repressed by Iran’s theocratic regime. Trump ultimately held off at the time at the urging of regional allies, as well as some of his own advisers, when it became clear that the US military — at the time engaged in major operations around Venezuela — didn’t have sufficient assets in the region to deter Iranian counterattacks.
That is no longer the case. The United States has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region, each with three destroyer escorts, as well as half a dozen other surface ships and — almost certainly — nuclear submarines whose locations are not disclosed. Dozens of aircraft, including F-22 and F-16 fighters jets and surveillance planes, have been deployed around the Middle East as well — the greatest concentration of airpower in the region since the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It has also worked to replenish air defense batteries that were depleted by Iranian missile and drone strikes during June’s “12-day war.”
In short, analysts suggest this is enough firepower for an engagement lasting multiple weeks, not just a few hours or days.
This is something of a moving target. Trump’s threat to Iran in January was in response to the massacre of protesters. But the protests have now largely subsided, and it’s too late to rescue the thousands who were massacred.
The main discussions before the attack concerned Iran’s nuclear program. Though this program was severely degraded by US airstrikes in June (Trump proclaimed it “obliterated”), the Trump administration is calling for Iran to abandon nuclear enrichment entirely, the process that can be used to create material for weapons. Iran, which maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful, is insisting on its right to enrich, though it has indicated a willingness to make some concessions, such as diluting its stock of near-weapons grade enriched uranium.
The United States also sought to expand the talks to encompass issues including Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support for regional proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Iran has been extremely resistant to this. For all the focus on nuclear weapons, Iran’s ballistic missiles may end up being the crux of this crisis: They’re a particular concern for Israel, which is in range of them. But Iran also views them as a core component of its ability to defend itself.
But the latest rhetoric suggests the United States seeks not to make a deal with the Islamic Republic, but to eliminate it. Trump said last week that regime change in Iran is “the best thing that could happen,” and urged Iranians on Saturday to overthrow their government. Many Iranians would surely agree, though the president did not elaborate on what he envisioned replacing the regime.
Americans may assume that war would look something like June’s “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a relatively brief series of strikes that was resolved quickly. That will probably not be the case.
The June war was a primarily Israeli operation, with the US joining in to attack three Iranian nuclear facilities a week in, when it was already clear that the Israelis were having military success and Iran’s retaliation was limited.
This time around, the United States is in the driver’s seat from the start, though Israel is involved. And reporting suggests the administration has a more extensive operation in mind.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the options Trump was presented with by military briefers include a “campaign to kill scores of Iranian political and military leaders, with the goal of overthrowing the government…as well as an air attack that would be limited to striking targets including nuclear and ballistic-missile facilities.” Both types of campaigns could potentially last for weeks. Of course, the reality could well turn out quite different: Ahead of the US intervention in Venezuela, few predicted that the United States would simply capture the country’s president while leaving most of its regime in place.
In June, Iranian retaliation against US forces in the Middle East was limited and telegraphed in advance. That may not be the case this time, as Iran’s leaders may feel they’re in an existential fight for survival that requires a stronger response.
Though its nuclear program may be in shambles, the regime has worked diligently since last summer to reconstitute its ballistic missile deterrent, meaning retaliatory strikes against US bases, as well as Israel and US allies in the Gulf are likely. How much damage it is really capable of inflicting is an open question, though Israel was reportedly running dangerously low on interceptors by the end of the 12-day war and may have sustained more casualties if the conflict had lasted longer. Iran also last week conducted exercises that temporarily shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil chokepoint through which 31 percent of the world’s sea-born crude flows.
Trump has clearly grown more confident about using military force, but Iran’s calculation may be that he has little tolerance for a long, drawn-out, messy conflict. In Trump’s more than five years as president, one thing we have not yet seen is how he would respond to a conflict with a significant number of US casualties.
Though the Israeli government was reportedly concerned in January about the state of their air defenses, they were a participant in the attacks early Saturday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, deeply unpopular heading into elections later this year, would no doubt much rather keep the public focused on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs than the swirling questions about his handling of the October 7 attacks.
As for other regional countries, the picture is more mixed. During the Obama administration and Trump’s first term, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states pushed for a maximally hawkish position on Iran. Today, while they would no doubt prefer an end to the Islamic Republic, they’re less enthusiastic about war, due to concerns about Iranian retaliation as well as the regional destabilization that could result from a collapse of the Iranian regime. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have said they will not allow the United States to use their airspace for an attack on Iran, though that may not spare them from Iranian retaliation.
The UK is also reportedly preventing the US from using its airbases for an attack on Iran, including the strategically located base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, prompting an angry outburst from Trump early this week.
As for Iran’s few allies, it conducted joint naval drills with Russia’s military this week, but it’s hard to imagine Moscow doing much to come to Tehran’s aid if war begins.
The administration is very unlikely to ask Congress for an authorization to use military force against Iran, or to present a detailed legal rationale for doing so. Given that Iran’s nuclear program is, according to the administration’s own assessments, nowhere close to producing a weapon, and given that the United States is not in range of Iranian missiles, it would be hard to make the case that it constitutes the type of imminent threat that would allow the president to order military action without congressional authorization.
Past administrations, including Trump’s after Midnight Hammer, have argued that military operations that are limited in scope and duration don’t constitute “war” in the constitutional sense and don’t require authorization. Many legal scholars don’t buy that, but even if you do, it would get harder to justify it if the war turns out to be the kind of expansive operation reportedly under discussion.
In Congress, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) are planning to move next week to force a vote on a resolution that would require the administration to seek congressional authorization, but previous efforts to do this under the Trump administration have not been successful. In all likelihood, congressional oversight of Trump’s ability to wage war is about to be further watered down.
In fairness to Trump, in each of his previous military engagements, dating back to the strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in his first term, he has been able to defy critics who warned he was risking a dangerous quagmire. But if he is really contemplating an operation as extensive as what has been reported in recent days, or pursuing the overthrow of the Iranian state itself, this suggests he may be growing confident to the point he’s considering just the sort of war he has lambasted previous presidents for getting involved with.
Both sides now appear dangerously confident about their prospects heading into a conflict: The United States in its ability to inflict damage on Iran at will without significant blowback; Iran in its ability to make the conflict so painful for the United States that it can inflict a strategic defeat rather than hastening its own demise after a year that has left it severely weakened, economically, politically, and militarily.
The confidence on both sides may end up getting a lot of people killed.
2026-02-28 19:00:00
2026年2月25日，印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪与以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在印度新德里举行会晤。| 印度新闻局（PIB）/Anadolu 通过 Getty 图片提供
过去一周，我们看到了世界政治未来可能的样貌，而这一幕并不令人愉快。这一幕出现在莫迪对以色列的访问中，他签署了广泛的国防合作协议，并在以色列议会（称为“国会”）发表演讲。这种行为看似是国际政治中的常规操作，但实际上非常不寻常：历史上，印度一直与以色列保持距离，并经常是国际上支持巴勒斯坦的重要力量。鉴于近年来加沙地区持续的暴力冲突，按理说这样一个国家应该与以色列保持距离。然而，内塔尼亚胡却在攻击以色列民主制度的基础，这本应是民主国家领导人所不能接受的。但事实恰恰相反。对于印度当前的领导层而言，以色列对加沙的攻击和民主倒退，可能并非坏事，而是某种美德。
莫迪领导下的印度与内塔尼亚胡领导下的以色列惊人相似。莫迪坚信排外的“印度教民族主义”（Hindutva）意识形态，致力于削弱印度国家的基本理念——将历史上的世俗民主制度替换为以印度教多数群体为中心的国家，特别针对穆斯林少数群体进行排斥。为了实现这一议程，莫迪不断集中权力，并削弱印度选举制度的公平性。
印度与以色列日益增长的安全合作不仅在物质层面有意义，也因为这两个国家，拥有这样的政府，彼此之间存在真正的意识形态共鸣。在一个后特朗普时代，旧有人权和国际法的规则持续削弱，这种人权侵犯者之间的联系可能成为全球格局中越来越重要的一部分，即使这些国家表面上宣称是民主国家。
印度和以色列都是前英国殖民地，分别于1947年8月和1948年5月独立。起初，这两个国家似乎走向了不同的方向。早期的印度国家因与巴基斯坦的分裂而定义，印度致力于建立一个世俗的自由民主国家，而巴基斯坦的领导人则认为只有建立一个以穆斯林为主的国家，才能确保其公民的安全。分裂过程充满暴力且极具破坏性，导致历史上最大规模的人口迁移之一，数百万印度教徒和穆斯林被迫迁离家园以适应新的国界。
对印度早期领导人而言，分裂带来的血腥事件以及与巴基斯坦的持续敌对，证明了民族主义的弊端。而以色列则更像中东的巴基斯坦。犹太复国主义运动认为，只有建立一个明确的犹太国家，才能确保巴勒斯坦犹太人的安全，因此推动了与周边阿拉伯国家的分离，并在建国初期就与阿拉伯国家爆发了战争。
因此，印度的政治精英长期以来对以色列和犹太复国主义持怀疑态度，他们的同情心更多地投向了纳克巴（Nakba）期间被驱逐的巴勒斯坦难民。正如印度专家克里斯托夫·贾弗雷洛特（Christophe Jaffrelot）最近在《The Wire》上所写，这种态度是印度中东政策的驱动力之一。“印度长期以来一直是巴勒斯坦事业的领导者，”他写道，“历史上，印度反对以色列国的建立，贾瓦哈拉尔·尼赫鲁曾倡导建立一个世俗国家，保障犹太少数群体的权利。”
这种态度的转变，贾弗雷洛特认为，归功于莫迪。自2014年上任以来，莫迪逐步加强了新德里与耶路撒冷的关系，特别关注两国在打击激进恐怖主义方面的共同利益。2023年10月7日之后，这种关系发生了决定性的变化。“印度努力在加沙战争中保持中立，但随着平民伤亡和国际谴责的加剧，它实际上支持了以色列，”贾弗雷洛特写道，并指出以色列在战争期间向印度出售武器，同时加深了经济联系。
如今，印度的立场已经很明显。不仅新德里明确表示以色列是其反恐政策的灵感来源，而且印度还成为以色列军售的主要买家，占其所有军售的约46%。莫迪本周的访问，除了实际协议外，几乎官方确认了印度在以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突中立场的转变。他在以色列国会的演讲中大量赞扬以色列，而对巴勒斯坦的讨论则仅是一笔带过。
莫迪对以色列的看法与他的前任不同，因为他的世界观与他们根本对立。不像尼赫鲁这样的世俗主义者，莫迪将以色列的强硬民族主义视为一种精神上的共鸣。他与内塔尼亚胡都从民族主义的角度看待国家：只有某一民族才有合法的归属和所有权。他们都对居住在他们认为应属于自己的土地上的穆斯林持有特殊的敌意，认为他们是闯入者，甚至是入侵者。
“2023年10月7日之后，印度教民族主义运动的领导人，包括部长和国会议员，都毫无保留地支持以色列，不仅谴责恐怖分子，还对穆斯林群体进行攻击，”贾弗雷洛特写道。“这种亲以色列的倾向如此普遍，以至于司法系统再次呼应这一立场，禁止支持巴勒斯坦的示威活动。”
印度与以色列日益紧密的合作不仅源于战略利益，也反映了所谓“民族主义国际”的兴起。这一概念指的是，极右翼运动正在越来越多地分享知识并协调行动，以共同对抗现有的自由主义秩序。这一术语最初源于西方政治，指的是像美国共和党与匈牙利执政党“匈牙利青年联盟”（Fidesz）之间的关系。通常，这一术语被半开玩笑地使用，因为民族主义运动本质上很难长期稳定合作。
但与东欧的民族主义运动不同，印度和以色列的极右翼民族主义几乎没有地理或历史上的冲突。由于地理和历史的隔阂，他们可以优先考虑共同的意识形态利益，而且正在越来越多地这样做。
这为全球政治的未来提供了一个可能的景象：一个以“强权即公理”为原则的时代，这正是当前美国政府所推崇的。在这个未来中，国家将不再感到有义务甚至表面上关注人权问题。像莫迪这样的崛起国家领导人，可能不再对被国际刑事法院起诉的以色列总理保持政治上的保留，而是会放任自己的冲动。
一个由极右翼运动组成的网络，主要因对穆斯林的共同敌意而联合起来，可能会将政府从西欧、南亚甚至北美联合在一起。这并非不可避免的未来，但正变得越来越有可能——这得益于拜登政府在加沙以色列暴行面前的无能，以及特朗普政府对当前国际秩序的破坏。
This past week, we got a vision of what the future of world politics might look like. And it wasn’t pretty.
The glimpse came during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, in which he signed an expansive defense cooperation agreement and gave a speech to Israel’s parliament (called the Knesset). This kind of thing may seem like the routine stuff of international politics, but it’s actually highly unusual: Historically, India has kept its distance from Israel and has often acted as a prominent international supporter of the Palestinian cause.
Such a country should, in theory, be moving away from Israel, given the past several years of brutality in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been aggressively attacking the foundations of Israeli democracy, which you’d think would be a problem for the leader of a country frequently described as the world’s largest democracy.
But the opposite is true. It is quite likely that Israel’s assault on Gaza and ongoing democratic backsliding are, for India’s current leadership, not vices but virtues.
India under Modi is strikingly similar to Israel under Netanyahu. Modi, a deep believer in the chauvinist Hindutva ideology, has worked to undermine the basic idea of the Indian state — replacing its historic secular democracy with a state by and for the Hindu majority, particularly targeting the Muslim minority for exclusion. In order to accomplish this agenda, Modi has worked to consolidate power in his own hands — and undermine the fairness of the Indian electoral system in the process.
Growing security cooperation between India and Israel doesn’t just make sense on a material level: It’s also because these countries, with these particular governments, feel a genuine ideological affinity.
And in a post-Trump world, where old rules about human rights and international law continue to weaken, these kinds of ties between human rights-abusing authoritarians may become an increasingly important part of the global landscape — even in countries that claim, on the surface, to be democracies.
India and Israel, both formerly British possessions, became independent within a year of each other (August 1947 and May 1948, respectively). And at first, the two countries appeared to be traveling in opposite directions.
The early Indian state was defined by its partition with Pakistan. While India aimed to be a secular liberal democracy for all of its citizens, Pakistan’s leaders believed that its citizens could only be secure in a Muslim-majority state. The process of splitting the two states was violent and massively disruptive, causing one of the largest episodes of human migration in recorded history as Hindus and Muslims uprooted their lives to fit the new national boundaries.
For India’s early leaders, the bloodiness of partition — and enduring hostilities with Pakistan — proved the folly of ethno-nationalism.
Israel, by contrast, was more like a Middle Eastern Pakistan. Believing that the Jews of Palestine could only be safe in an avowedly Jewish state, the Zionist movement pushed for post-colonial political separation from surrounding Arab states — and fought its first war to enforce it.
Thus, the Indian political elite long viewed Israel and Zionism suspiciously, its sympathies aligning with the Palestinian refugees displaced in the Nakba. This approach was, as leading India expert Christophe Jaffrelot recently wrote in The Wire, a driving force in India’s Middle East policy.
“India has long been a leader in the Palestinian cause,” he writes. “Historically, it opposed the creation of the State of Israel, with [first prime minister Jawaharlal] Nehru advocating for the creation of a secular state where the Jewish minority would enjoy protections.”
This changed, in Jaffrelot’s telling, because of Modi. Since becoming prime minister in 2014, he has gradually worked to strengthen ties between New Delhi and Jerusalem — focusing, in particular, on their shared interests and experience in combating jihadist terrorism.
The decisive break came after October 7, 2023. “India tried hard not to take sides in Israel’s war on Gaza, but by abstaining [in UN votes] as civilian casualties — and international outrage — continued to mount, it effectively sided with Israel,” Jaffrelot writes, adding that Israel also sent weapons to Israel and deepened economic ties as the Gaza war grew more vicious.
Today, there’s little doubt where India lies.
Not only does New Delhi explicitly cite Israel as a source of inspiration for its counterterrorism policies, but it has begun paying into them — making up roughly half (46 percent) of all foreign purchases of Israeli arms.
Modi’s trip this past week was, on top of any tangible agreements, an all-but-official confirmation that India has switched sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Modi’s speech to the Knesset spent a lot of time lavishing praise on Israel — and confined its discussion of the Palestinians to a thin, barely noticeable aside.
Modi sees Israel differently from his predecessors because his worldview is fundamentally opposed to theirs.
Unlike secularists like Nehru, Hindutva devotees see a spiritual twin in the hardline versions of Zionism embraced by Netanyahu and his allies on the Israeli right.
Both Modi and Netanyahu see the nation in ethno-national terms: There is only one people who has a legitimate claim on belonging and ownership. Both share a special antipathy for Muslims living on land they see as rightfully theirs, seeing them as interlopers at best and invaders at worst.
“After October 7, 2023, leaders of the Hindutva movement — including ministers and members of parliament — expressed their unreserved solidarity with Israel, denouncing not only terrorists but Muslims in general,” Jaffrelot writes. “This pro-Israel bias was so widespread that the judiciary once again echoed it by banning demonstrations in support of the Palestinians.”
Growing India-Israel partnership is not just the result of strategic interests: It reflects a new development in the rise of the so-called nationalist international. This is, in essence, the concept that far-right movements are increasingly sharing knowledge and coordinating their activities to advance a shared struggle against the existing liberal order.
Originating from Western politics, in reference to things like the ties between the Republican party and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz group, the term “nationalist international” is often deployed semi-ironically — in the sense that nationalist movements are, by their nature, unlikely to be able to be stable partners with each other for very long.
But unlike, say, Eastern European nationalist movements, the Israeli and Indian far-right nationalisms have few points of geographical or historical conflict. Separated by geography and history, they are free to prioritize their shared ideological interests — and are, increasingly, doing so.
This is a glimpse into a possible future for global politics: one in which the “might makes right” ethos championed by the current US administration wins the day.
In this future, countries will no longer feel burdened by the need to even pay lip service to human rights concerns.
Leaders of ascendant powers like Modi, who might once have at least had political reservations about being too closely linked to an Israeli prime minister under ICC indictment, will act on their unrestrained impulses. A network of far-right movements, united in large part by shared hostility to Muslims, will unite a group of governments ranging from Western Europe to South Asia — maybe even North America.
This is not an inevitable future. But it is an increasingly possible one — enabled both by the Biden administration’s fecklessness in the face of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the Trump administration’s bulldozing of the current international order.