Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are drastically different men, but they do have one important thing in common: Each thinks he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Alas, though, because they have all done the dumbest thing you can do as a leader — surround yourself with sycophants — they have all blundered into dead-end wars from which they can extricate themselves today only by eating a banquet of crow.

特朗普、内塔尼亚胡和普京是三个截然不同的人，但他们有一个重要的共同点：自以为是所到之处最聪明的那个人。然而可叹的是，他们都犯了领导者所能犯下的最愚蠢的错误——让身边围满了阿谀奉承之徒。结果，他们都一头撞进了没有出路的战争死胡同，如今只有咽下满满一盘认输的苦果才能脱身。

Watch out. There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless leader faced with a plate of crow: Sometimes his instinct is to double down on a losing strategy instead.

当心。没有什么比一个鲁莽的领导者面对一盘苦果更危险的了：有时，他的本能反应是在一条输定的道路上继续加码。

Let’s start with the Israeli prime minister. The tell that Netanyahu has gone off the rails — and taken the leadership of the famed Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, with him — is reflected in two decisions he made that were flat-out crazy: The first is that Israel could topple the Tehran regime with one big blow from the air, and the second was that it could choose Iran’s new leader.

我们先说以色列总理。内塔尼亚胡已经脱轨的迹象——并且把大名鼎鼎的以色列情报机构摩萨德的领导层也一并带偏——体现在他做出的两个完全疯狂的决定上：第一，以色列可以凭借一次大规模空中打击推翻德黑兰政权；第二，它可以替伊朗选择新的领导人。

Before I explain just how crazy that was, some quick background: Ever since I saw up close how the Lebanese Christian militia, the Phalangists, helped sucker the Mossad in 1982 into thinking that through a quick invasion Israel could install the Phalangists’ anti-Palestinian leader, Bashir Gemayel, as president in Beirut, I have held the following rule when it comes to the vaunted Israeli intelligence service: If you want someone assassinated in Beirut or Tehran, call the Mossad. If you want to understand political and social trends in Beirut or Tehran, do not call the Mossad. Because the very reason it is good at the first also leads it to be bad at the second.

在我解释这何其荒唐之前，先交代一点背景：自从1982年我亲眼目睹黎巴嫩基督教民兵组织长枪党如何协助诱骗摩萨德、使其以为以色列可以通过一次快速入侵将长枪党反巴勒斯坦的领袖巴希尔·杰马耶勒扶植为贝鲁特总统之后，我就对这个被吹得神乎其神的以色列情报机构确立了如下原则：如果你想在贝鲁特或德黑兰暗杀某个人，那就找摩萨德；如果你想了解贝鲁特或德黑兰的政治和社会走势，那就千万别找摩萨德。因为摩萨德擅长前者的原因，恰恰也导致了它不擅长后者。

The Mossad is very good at hunting and killing Israel’s foes, in large part because it is very skilled at recruiting disgruntled citizens in Lebanon, Iran, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world — that is, people who hate their regimes and are willing to work with Israel to topple them. The problem is that these very same agents, motivated either by grievance or money, tend to exaggerate how weak their regime is and how easy bringing it down would be.

摩萨德之所以擅长追捕并清除以色列的敌人，很大程度上是因为它极善于在黎巴嫩、伊朗、约旦河西岸及阿拉伯世界其他地方招募心怀不满的当地人——也就是那些痛恨本国政权、愿意与以色列合作将其推翻的人。问题在于，这些线人无论出于怨恨还是金钱驱使，都倾向于夸大本国政权的脆弱程度，以及推翻它有多么容易。

They want Israel to do the dirty work for them. The result is that a dupe like Trump, who doesn’t know any history, assumes that because the Mossad is good at assassinating people, it is equally good at predicting what will happen the morning after they are dead.

他们想让以色列替自己做脏活。结果就是，像特朗普这样不了解历史的冤大头会以为，既然摩萨德擅长暗杀，那它也一定擅长预测暗杀对象死后的局势会如何发展。

That explains why, after the White House meeting in February when Netanyahu and the Mossad’s director at the time, David Barnea, essentially argued that if Israel and the United States assassinated Iran’s top leaders, the government would fall and nice people would take over, Trump did not laugh them out of the room. The president apparently assumed that because the Mossad had super assassination powers it also had super analytical powers, and therefore Iran would tumble into his lap the same way Venezuela did when the U.S. removed its president, Nicolás Maduro.

这也就解释了为什么在今年2月白宫的会面中，当内塔尼亚胡和当时的摩萨德局长达维德·巴尔内亚基本上是在说——只要以色列和美国联手暗杀伊朗最高层领导人，伊朗政府就会垮台，然后一群好人便会接管政权时，特朗普并没有把他们当场轰出会议室。总统显然认为，既然摩萨德拥有超强的暗杀能力，那它也一定拥有超强的分析能力，因此伊朗也会像美国推翻委内瑞拉总统马杜罗之后那样，轻而易举地落入他的手中。

As my colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported in their must-read book, “Regime Change,” C.I.A. director John Ratcliffe used one word to describe Netanyahu’s Iran regime change scenarios: “farcical.” Trump, confident that he knew better, ignored him and others — and has been paying the price ever since.

正如我的同事玛吉·哈伯曼和乔纳森·斯旺在他们那本不可不读的新书《政权更迭》(Regime Change)中所记载的，中央情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫当时用一个词来形容内塔尼亚胡的伊朗政权更迭方案——荒唐透顶。特朗普自信地认为自己比所有人都更高明，无视了拉特克利夫等人的警告，而为此付出的代价也延续至今。

The even bigger tell that both Netanyahu and his intelligence agency had become drunk with power was another incredible story The Times uncovered: that Mossad had been grooming former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to take over Iran after the government of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was wiped out. As my colleagues reported: “Israel’s decision to build a regime-change plan around Mr. Ahmadinejad is an extraordinary twist in the saga of the country’s relations with the former president, who was known for accelerating Iran’s nuclear program, calling regularly for the destruction of Israel and denying the Holocaust.”

另一个更能说明内塔尼亚胡及其情报机构已经被权力冲昏头脑的证据是《纽约时报》披露的另一则令人难以置信的消息：摩萨德竟一直在扶植伊朗前总统马哈茂德·艾哈迈迪-内贾德，准备在最高领袖阿亚图拉阿里·哈梅内伊政权被消灭后，由他接掌伊朗政权。正如我的同事报道的那样：“以色列决定围绕艾哈迈迪-内贾德制定一项政权更迭计划，这在该国与这位前总统的关系史中堪称戏剧性的转折——艾哈迈迪-内贾德曾因加速伊朗核计划、经常呼吁消灭以色列以及否认犹太人大屠杀闻名。”

Hello, Israel? Do you know anything about modern Iranian history? Have you ever heard of Mohammad Mossadegh? He was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 who was ousted by a coup engineered by the C.I.A. and Britain’s MI6 after Iran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Fury over that coup, which installed the West’s man in Tehran, still burns in the heart of many Iranians.

喂，以色列？你们了解现代伊朗历史吗？你们听说过穆罕默德·摩萨台吗？他是1951年至1953年伊朗民选总理，在伊朗将英伊石油公司国有化后，遭到中央情报局与英国军情六处联手策动的政变推翻。那场政变扶植了一个亲西方的政权上台，而伊朗人至今仍对这场政变怒火难消。

The sheer madness that Israel thought it could install Ahmadinejad — and that the Iranian body politic would not reject him the way a human body rejects an organ implant — is insane. Did Netanyahu and the Mossad really think that proud, nationalistic Iranians, even those who hate the clerics governing them, would say: “Oh, thank you, Bibi, for installing our next leader?” The vanity and overreach in thinking that 7.2 million Israeli Jews could decide who would rule more than 90 million Iranian Muslims is astounding.

以色列竟然认为自己可以扶植艾哈迈迪-内贾德上台——而伊朗举国上下不会像人体排斥移植器官一样排斥他，这种想法简直疯狂。内塔尼亚胡和摩萨德难道真的以为，那些骄傲而富有民族主义情绪的伊朗人——哪怕他们痛恨统治自己的宗教神权集团——会说：“哦，谢谢你，比比（内塔尼亚胡的昵称——译注），谢谢你替我们安排好了下一任领导人。”认为720万以色列犹太人能够决定9000多万伊朗穆斯林由谁统治，这种自负和越界令人瞠目结舌。

Trump and Netanyahu are in good company with Putin, who drank his own Kool-Aid by assuming that Ukrainians were all dying to become part of Mother Russia again and that the democratically elected regime in Kyiv would easily fall.

特朗普和内塔尼亚胡在这方面并不孤独，普京与他们为伍——他迷信自己编织的神话，以为乌克兰人都迫不及待地想重归俄罗斯母亲的怀抱，相信基辅那个民主选举产生的政权会轻易倒台。

“Putin’s most fundamental error was believing his own narrative that Ukrainians and Russians were ‘one people’ and that Ukrainian independence was merely an artificial Western construct,” Robbin Laird, a military analyst, noted last year. “This ideological blind spot led him to expect that Russian forces would be welcomed as liberators.”

军事分析人士罗宾·莱尔德去年指出：“普京最根本的错误就是相信了自己那套关于乌克兰人与俄罗斯人是‘一个民族’，乌克兰独立不过是西方人为制造的产物。正是这种意识形态上的盲点使他以为俄罗斯军队会被乌克兰人当作解放者来欢迎。”

In a perfect echo of what happened in Iran, Russian intelligence appeared to have relied too heavily “on pro-Russian sources who told Moscow what it wanted to hear,” Laird said, “rather than providing accurate ground truth about Ukrainian sentiment and capabilities.”

与伊朗的情况如出一辙，俄罗斯情报部门似乎过度依赖“亲俄消息来源，他们告诉莫斯科的都是莫斯科想听的话”，莱尔德说道，“而不是如实呈现乌克兰民情和实力的真实情况。”

Netanyahu, for all his tactical victories over Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran, has not converted any of it into a new strategic reality for Israel. That would require him to make clear that his military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran were meant to make the region safe for an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

尽管内塔尼亚胡在对哈马斯、真主党以及德黑兰的行动中取得了一系列战术上的胜利，但他并没有把这些胜利转化为以色列新的战略现实。要做到这一点，他必须明确表示，自己在加沙、黎巴嫩和伊朗的军事行动是为了让这一地区有朝一日实现以巴和平而扫清障碍。

Instead, what the whole world sees is Netanyahu trying to make the region safe for an Israeli annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, and his being ready to throw away everything else — normalization with Saudi Arabia, the support of many young Americans, the support of the Democratic Party, the support of Western Europe and the independence of Israel’s judiciary — to get it.

然而，全世界看到的却是，内塔尼亚胡试图让这一地区变得适合以色列吞并加沙和约旦河西岸，并准备为此抛弃其他一切——包括与沙特阿拉伯关系正常化、许多美国年轻人的支持、民主党的支持、西欧国家的支持，以及以色列司法体系的独立性。

Meanwhile, Trump has weakened and isolated America by lazily choosing to invade Iran with no allies, no international legitimation and no Plan B to eliminate Tehran’s ability to build a weapon of mass destruction. Instead, Trump enabled Iran to discover two incredibly cheap and effective weapons of mass disruption: controlling the Strait of Hormuz and bombing America’s Persian Gulf allies nearly every time Trump bombs Iran.

与此同时，特朗普因为懒得认真谋划，在没有盟友、没有国际合法性、也没有备选方案来彻底消除德黑兰制造大规模杀伤性武器能力的情况下，就贸然入侵伊朗，从而削弱了美国，也让美国更加孤立。相反，特朗普反而让伊朗发现了两种成本极低却极其有效的大规模破坏性武器：控制霍尔木兹海峡，以及几乎每当特朗普轰炸伊朗时，就轰炸美国在波斯湾的盟友。

And Putin — instead of doing the hard work of making Russia a free and open society that Ukrainians actually might be attracted to — has turned what was a weak Russian democracy into a full-blown police state, with a vulnerable petro-economy. Today, Russia is nowhere to be found in the A.I. revolution. It is as if cars were just invented and Putin said he’d prefer to invest in more horses — and his 19th-century fantasy of a unified Russian Motherland.

而普京——他没有踏踏实实地把俄罗斯建设成一个真正自由开放、能够吸引乌克兰人的社会，反而把原本脆弱的俄罗斯民主政体变成了一个彻头彻尾的警察国家，并依赖充满风险的石油经济。如今，在人工智能革命中，俄罗斯几乎毫无存在感。这就好比汽车刚刚问世，普京却说，他更愿意投资更多的马匹，以及他那个关于统一“俄罗斯母亲”的19世纪幻想。

What we have today is three leaders all now trying to bomb their way out of a blind alley.

我们今天看到的，是三个领导者都在试图用轰炸来杀出死胡同。

But let us not forget the twisted, cynical, incompetent leaders who have been running Iran since 1979. They, too, are in their own cul-de-sac. Instead of empowering their talented population, Iran’s clerical dictators chose to ensconce themselves in power for 47 years by gunning down opponents, cramming puritanical Islam down the throats of their people and wasting billions of dollars trying to destroy Israel.

但我们也不要忘记那些自1979年以来一直统治伊朗的扭曲、冷酷自私、无能的领导人。他们也同样困在自己的死胡同里。伊朗的神权独裁者非但没有赋能他们才华横溢的人民，而是通过枪杀反对者、把严苛的宗教教条强行灌输给人民，以及浪费数十亿美元试图摧毁以色列，让自己在权力宝座上盘踞了47年。

Let us hope that one day their people will topple them on their own, maybe with help from a surprising, nonsovereign power. Iran’s leaders recklessly over-exploited their environment and recklessly dammed up too many rivers to reward regime cronies and are now totally vulnerable to a much more powerful foe than Trump or Netanyahu: Mother Nature. The most harrowing report about Iran’s future was put out seven months ago by analysts writing in the highly regarded Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — and it never mentioned nuclear weapons. It mentioned only the nation’s acute water crisis, which may have shut down more Iranian institutions than Israel and America combined.

但愿有一天，伊朗人民能够依靠自己的力量推翻他们，也许还会得到一种出人意料、并非主权国家的力量的帮助。伊朗领导人肆无忌惮地掠夺本国环境，又为了奖赏政权亲信而肆意修建水坝、截断太多河流，如今他们面对的敌人比特朗普或内塔尼亚胡都更强大——那就是大自然。七个月前，备受推崇的《原子科学家公报》(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)上有一篇分析报告，对伊朗未来作出了最令人不寒而栗的预测，而全文竟一次都没有提到核武器。它谈到的只有伊朗严峻的水资源危机，而这场危机对伊朗机构造成的瘫痪可能已经超过了以色列和美国联手造成的影响。

“During the summer of 2025, Iran experienced an exceptional heat wave, with daytime temperatures across several regions, including Tehran, approaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and forcing the temporary closure of public offices and banks,” the analysts said. “During this period, major reservoirs supplying the Tehran region reached record-low levels. … Officials warned that the capital city may even have to be evacuated if water supplies fail to recover.”

“2025年夏季，伊朗经历了一场极端热浪，包括德黑兰在内的多个地区白天气温接近50摄氏度，迫使公共办公室和银行临时关闭，”分析人士写道。“在此期间，为德黑兰地区供水的主要水库水位降至历史最低……官员们警告，如果供水状况无法恢复，首都甚至可能不得不疏散。”

Bottom line, eventually all these conflicts will end in negotiations, because none of these leaders can sustain their stupid wars indefinitely. The only question is when they will have to call the waiter over and say: “Young man, could you please bring me a plate of crow.”

一言以蔽之，所有这些冲突最终都将以谈判收场，因为这些领导人没有一个能够无限期地维持他们的愚蠢战争。唯一的问题只是：他们何时才不得不招手唤来服务员，说一句：“年轻人，能不能给我端上一盘认输的苦果。”