The War Is Going Better Than You Think

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The War Is Going Better Than You Think - The New York Times
[url]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/opinion/iran-war-history.html[/url]

March 24, 2026
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Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

Most Americans probably don’t look back at March 2012 — if they remember it at all — and think of terrifyingly high gas prices. In the month when “The Hunger Games” ruled the box office and President Barack Obama was on his way to a comfortable re-election, the price of Brent crude closed the month around $123 a barrel. That would be about $175 a barrel in today’s dollars.

As of Tuesday, despite Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its attacks on its neighbors’ energy facilities, it’s hovering around $100, slightly higher than the average inflation-adjusted price since January 2001, roughly $95.

That ought to provide some perspective on the panic over the war in the Middle East. To hear the critics’ version of events, an unprovoked and unnecessary attack on Iran, launched at Israel’s behest, is already a foreign-policy fiasco that has put the global economy at risk without any clear objective or endgame. As Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend, “We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”

Really? Let’s take a tour of some of the recent history.

During the 1991 Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a campaign that is widely considered a brilliant military success, the U.S.-led coalition lost 75 aircraft, 42 of them in combat. In this conflict, four manned aircraft have been destroyed, three to friendly fire and one in an accident. Not a single manned plane has yet been lost over Iran.

The U.S. air and land campaign in that operation lasted a full six weeks. Today it’s remembered as a lightning-fast war. The current conflict with Iran is less than four weeks old.

In the 1989-90 invasion of Panama, whose military phase lasted a few days, the United States lost 23 soldiers, with 325 more wounded. So far in this war, U.S. losses are 13 dead. Among the more than 230 wounded, most have swiftly returned to duty.

During the Persian Gulf crisis that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. economy went into recession and the Dow fell by about 13 percent before the allied air war began. Since conflict with Iran began last June with Operation Midnight Hammer, the Dow is up by 9 percent as of Tuesday morning.

At the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States made a failed decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein and his senior leadership, some of whom became leaders of the insurgency. In this war, much of Iran’s top leadership was killed on the first day and there is still no proof of life from the new supreme leader. Yousef Pezeshkian, the son of the current president, has written that if Iran can’t prevent the continued assassination of its leaders, “we will lose the war.”

Between 1987 and 1988, in the final stages of the so-called tanker war, the Reagan administration reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and had the U.S. Navy escort them out of the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian mine nearly sank an American frigate. The conflict wound down after the United States sank a handful of Iranian navy ships. This time around, we have destroyed almost all of Iran’s navy with no naval losses of our own.

In 1991, Iraq fired roughly 40 missiles toward Israel. Hardly any were intercepted despite the deployment of Patriot batteries there. In this war, Israel is registering an interception rate of 92 percent against more than 400 missiles. Iran’s overall rate of fire has dropped from 438 ballistic missiles on the first day of the war to 21 on Monday. Drone fire has also declined from 345 to 75 for the same dates.

In the months leading up to the second Iraq war, the George W. Bush administration made a case based on erroneous information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the current war, there is no question that some 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium lie stashed and buried in Iran — possibly enough, with further enrichment and conversion into uranium metal, for 11 nuclear bombs. If the outrage of the Iraq war is that Hussein didn’t have W.M.D. capabilities, is it now supposed to be somehow more outrageous that Iran does?

One of the worst mistakes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was the attempt by U.S. administrators to remake societies in both countries — well-intended efforts with some noble results that nonetheless were beyond our grasp. In this war, despite some varying rhetoric from President Trump, the goal has been reasonably clear and consistent: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or other means to menace its neighbors. As for regime change, we hope the Iranian people use the opportunity of their leadership’s weakness to seize their own destiny. But we won’t do it for them.

The Bush administration had little support from Arab nations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. Now The Times reports, “Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a ‘historic opportunity’ to remake the Middle East.” Hopefully, one way in which it can be remade is through a peace treaty between Riyadh and Jerusalem.

In hindsight, the single biggest error of the gulf war was to end it too soon, before Saddam Hussein’s forces were thoroughly routed. President Trump should not make the same mistake.

I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began. I am also purposely comparing the war with Iran to past wars of similar scale, rather than our true military fiascoes in Vietnam, Korea and the two world wars — in which tens of thousands of Americans died due to poor tactical planning and bad strategy.

Still, if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.


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布雷特·斯蒂芬斯

战争进展比你想象的要顺利。
2026年3月24日
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大多数美国人可能不会回想起2012年3月——如果他们还记得的话——然后想到令人咋舌的高油价。就在《饥饿游戏》票房大卖、奥巴马总统连任之路也一路顺风顺水的那个月，布伦特原油价格当月收于每桶123美元左右。按今天的美元价格计算，大约是每桶175美元。

截至周二，尽管伊朗有效地封锁了霍尔木兹海峡并袭击了邻国的能源设施，但伊朗的油价仍徘徊在每桶 100 美元左右，略高于 2001 年 1 月以来经通胀调整后的平均价格（约每桶 95 美元）。

这或许能帮助我们更好地理解中东战争引发的恐慌。在批评者看来，这场应以色列要求对伊朗发动的无端且毫无必要的袭击，已经是一场外交政策的惨败，它使全球经济陷入危险，却没有任何明确的目标或最终目的。正如康涅狄格州民主党参议员克里斯·墨菲周末对NBC的克里斯汀·韦尔克所说：“在这个国家的历史上，我们从未见过如此无能的战争行为。”

真的吗？那我们来回顾一下近期的历史。

在1991年针对伊拉克萨达姆·侯赛因政权的“沙漠风暴”行动中，这场被广泛认为是军事上取得辉煌胜利的战役中，美国领导的联军损失了75架飞机，其中42架是在战斗中损失的。而在此次冲突中，有4架有人驾驶飞机被摧毁，其中3架是被友军误伤，1架是意外事故。迄今为止，还没有一架有人驾驶飞机在伊朗上空损失。

在那次行动中，美军的空地联合作战持续了整整六周。如今人们却将其视为一场速战速决的战争。而目前与伊朗的冲突至今还不到四周。

在1989-90年入侵巴拿马的战争中，军事阶段仅持续了几天，美军阵亡23人，另有325人受伤。而迄今为止，在这场战争中，美军的伤亡人数为13人。在230多名伤员中，大多数人已迅速重返岗位。

1990年8月伊拉克入侵科威特引发的波斯湾危机期间，美国经济陷入衰退，道琼斯指数在盟军空袭开始前下跌了约13%。自去年6月美伊“午夜铁锤行动”爆发冲突以来，截至周二上午，道琼斯指数已上涨9%。

2003年入侵伊拉克之初，美国对萨达姆·侯赛因及其高级领导人发动了一次失败的斩首行动，其中一些人后来成为了叛乱分子的领导人。在这场战争中，伊朗的许多高层领导人在第一天就被杀害，至今仍没有新任最高领袖的生死迹象。现任总统的儿子优素福·佩泽什基安曾撰文指出，如果伊朗无法阻止其领导人继续遭到暗杀，“我们将输掉这场战争”。

1987年至1988年间，在所谓的“油轮战”的最后阶段，里根政府将科威特油轮重新悬挂美国国旗，并派遣美国海军护送它们驶出霍尔木兹海峡。一枚伊朗水雷险些击沉一艘美国护卫舰。在美国击沉数艘伊朗海军舰艇后，冲突逐渐平息。而这一次，我们几乎摧毁了伊朗的全部海军力量，自身却毫发无损。

1991年，伊拉克向以色列发射了约40枚导弹。尽管以色列部署了爱国者导弹系统，但几乎没有拦截到任何一枚。而在这场战争中，以色列拦截了超过400枚导弹，拦截率高达92%。伊朗的导弹发射总量已从战争首日的438枚下降到周一的21枚。同期，无人机发射次数也从345次下降到75次。

在第二次伊拉克战争爆发前的几个月里，乔治·W·布什政府基于错误信息声称萨达姆·侯赛因拥有大规模杀伤性武器。而在当前的战争中，毫无疑问，伊朗境内藏匿着约970磅高浓缩铀——如果进一步浓缩并转化为铀金属，这些铀可能足以制造11枚核弹。如果伊拉克战争的令人愤慨之处在于侯赛因没有大规模杀伤性武器的能力，那么现在伊朗拥有大规模杀伤性武器就应该更加令人愤慨吗？

伊拉克和阿富汗战争中最严重的错误之一，是美国当局试图改造这两个国家的社会——这些努力的初衷是好的，也取得了一些可贵的成果，但最终却超出了我们的能力范围。在这场战争中，尽管特朗普总统的言论有所变化，但目标却相当明确且始终如一：伊朗不能拥有核武器或其他威胁邻国的手段。至于政权更迭，我们希望伊朗人民能够利用其领导层软弱的机会，掌握自己的命运。但我们不会替他们做这件事。

在2003年入侵伊拉克及其后续行动中，布什政府几乎没有得到阿拉伯国家的支持。如今，《泰晤士报》报道称，“沙特阿拉伯的实际领导人、王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼一直在敦促特朗普总统继续对伊朗发动战争，他认为美以军事行动为重塑中东提供了一个‘历史性机遇’。” 希望利雅得和耶路撒冷之间能够通过签署和平条约来实现这一目标。

事后看来，海湾战争最大的错误就是过早结束战争，当时萨达姆·侯赛因的军队尚未被彻底击溃。特朗普总统不应重蹈覆辙。

我并非对特朗普政府在计划上的失败视而不见，尤其是在战争开始前，他们不愿就战争的必要性提出更有力的公开论证，也未能争取更多盟友的支持。此外，我特意将与伊朗的战争与以往规模相近的战争进行比较，而不是与我们在越南战争、朝鲜战争以及两次世界大战中真正的军事惨败相提并论——在那些战争中，数万美国人因战术规划不周和战略失误而丧生。

然而，如果过去的几代人能够看到这场战争与他们当年被迫付出惨重代价参与的战争相比，进展得多么顺利，他们一定会惊叹于后代的相对幸运。他们也会惊叹于我们竟然无法珍惜现在所拥有的优势。