叙利亚会变成以色列和伊朗的战场吗？
在以色列声称击落一架从叙利亚起飞后进入以色列领空的伊朗无人机后，叙利亚防空部队击落了一架以色列战机。这件事就像是一道警醒世人的闪电，表明从叙利亚内战的漩涡中可能引发出一场新的地区战争。
Any new war between Israel and Iranian forces and their allies, will not start now. But all the elements needed to ignite it are in place and on present trends it looks inexorable.
以色列和伊朗以及它们各自的盟友不会马上就开战。但所有点燃战争所需的要素都已齐备，按照目前的趋势发展下去，打起来似乎是必然的。
The Israeli air force, long the lord of the Middle Eastern skies, is reckoned to have last lost a plane in 1982, the year Israel invaded Lebanon at the height of its neighbour’s civil war. This weekend it retaliated with a dozen air strikes inside Syria, including four that it said hit Iranian targets.
以色列空军长久称霸中东的天空，该国上一次损失战机是在1982年——那一年黎巴嫩内战正是如火如荼的时候，以色列入侵了这个邻国。最近，战机被击落的以色列采取了报复行动，对叙利亚发动了十几次空袭——据以色列称，其中4次空袭击中了伊朗目标。
Starting in 2011, as part of the chain of uprisings optimistically dubbed the Arab Spring, Syria’s civil war has sucked in regional and global actors from Turkey to Iran, and the US to Russia. The intervention on the ground of Iran and allies such as Hizbollah, the powerful Lebanese paramilitary force that emerged out of Israel’s 1982 invasion, aligned with Russia’s air force since 2015, saved the minority regime of Bashar al-Assad from succumbing to a mainly Sunni rebellion.
2011年，作为被乐观地称为“阿拉伯之春”(Arab Spring)的一系列起义的一部分，叙利亚内战爆发。许多国家都已卷入其中，中东地区的有土耳其、伊朗等，全球来看有美国、俄罗斯。伊朗及其盟友如黎巴嫩真主党(一支实力强大的准军事力量，诞生于1982年以色列入侵黎巴嫩以后)在地面的干预，以及俄罗斯空军自2015年以来的介入，使巴沙尔•阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)领导的少数族裔政权没有在主要是逊尼派发起的叛乱中倒台。
Seven years on, President Assad remains in office more than in power, as the ward of two states: Russia and Iran. Russia controls most of the air space of western Syria. Iran, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hizbollah, and Iraqi and Afghan Shia militia, is consolidating a presence on the ground — part of Tehran’s drive to build a Shia Arab axis and land bridge from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean. Israel regards this as strategically unacceptable.
七年过去了，在俄罗斯和伊朗两国的庇护下，叙利亚总统阿萨德虽然权力被削弱但仍然在位。俄罗斯控制着叙利亚西部的大部分领空。伊朗通过其伊斯兰革命卫队(Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps)、真主党以及伊拉克和阿富汗的什叶派民兵，正在巩固其在叙利亚的势力——这是伊朗打造什叶派阿拉伯轴心以及从扎格罗斯山脉到地中海的陆地走廊的计划的一部分。以色列认为该计划在战略上是不可接受的。
Israel, at war with Hizbollah episodically for more than 30 years, has avoided intervening directly in Syria’s war. But since 2013 it has carried out more than 100 air strikes inside Syria it says were aimed at Iranian arms destined for Hizbollah and, recently, what it described as an Iranian base. Israel, moreover, has said it cannot and will not accept two eventualities.
30多年来不时与真主党发生战争的以色列原本避免直接干预叙利亚内战。但自2013年以来，以色列对叙利亚境内发动了超过100次空袭，声称其空袭目标是运给真主党——最近说是运到一个伊朗基地——的伊朗武器。况且，以色列已表态不能、也不会接受两种情形。
First, if Iran and Hizbollah establish a permanent military presence in Syria, that is a casus belli, since it would open up a new front against Israel, alongside the Lebanese border to its north. Second, since Hizbollah fought it to a standstill over five weeks in 2006, the Lebanese militia has built a large arsenal of Iranian-supplied rockets that can reach deep into Israel. Israel says this stockpile — and missile manufacturing facilities it says it has detected in Lebanon — exceed its strategic tolerance.
第一，如果伊朗和真主党在叙利亚建立永久性的军事存在，这就是开战理由，因为届时他们将能开辟出一条对付以色列的新前线。第二，2006年真主党曾与以色列开打了超过5周的时间，直至休战，自那时以来，这个黎巴嫩民兵组织已经建立了庞大的军火库，里面装满了由伊朗供应的火箭，可以直捣以色列腹地。以色列表示，该军火库的库存——以及以方声称在黎巴嫩侦察到的导弹制造设施——超过了其战略容忍度。
This, as well as the game of chicken going on close to Israel’s borders, makes an eventual war more likely than not, turning Syria — and probably Lebanon — into a battlefield between Israel and Iran.
这一点，以及以色列边境附近正在上演的“懦夫博弈”，导致最终爆发战争的几率大于不发生战争的几率，那将把叙利亚——可能还有黎巴嫩——变成以色列和伊朗之间的战场。
Such a war would be orders of magnitude more destructive than the existing mayhem in Syria’s crowded skies and contested territory: aside from the downed Israeli jet, a Russian plane was shot down by jihadis in Idlib and a Turkish helicopter was destroyed by Syrian Kurdish fighters (backed by the US but under attack by Nato ally Turkey) in north-west Syria. All this has happened in the past week.
这样一场战争在破坏性上会比叙利亚现在拥挤的天空和有争议领土上的混乱高出几个数量级。目前，除了被击落的以色列战机外，一架俄罗斯飞机在伊德利卜(Idlib)被圣战分子击落，还有一架土耳其直升机在叙利亚西北部被叙利亚库尔德武装分子(受美国支持，但遭到北约盟友土耳其的攻击)击毁。所有这一切都是在过去一周发生的。
Also last week and further east in the Euphrates valley, US air strikes obliterated a pro-Assad force, partly made up of Afghan Shia militia and Arab tribal fighters, as it moved against Washington’s Kurdish allies.
同样在上周，在幼发拉底河流域东部，美国空袭摧毁了一支亲阿萨德武装力量(部分人员是阿富汗什叶派民兵和阿拉伯部落战士)，当时该部队对美国的库尔德盟友发动了进攻。
For the moment, neither Israel nor Iran look ready to add exponentially to this chaos. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, heads an ultra-right nationalist coalition but has always been more risk-averse than his bellicose rhetoric suggests. Iran’s clergy-dominated regime, no rhetorical slouch, will defend but probably not wish to risk its regional gains.
以色列和伊朗目前看来都无意让这场混乱骤然升级。以色列总理本雅明•内塔尼亚胡(Benjamin Netanyahu)领导一个极右翼民族主义执政联盟，他喜发好战言论，但其实一直以来都没那么爱冒险。伊朗由神职人员掌控的政权在言论上也不遑多让，他们会捍卫自己的地区利益，但应该不希望拿这些利益冒险。
There is still the risk of miscalculation. Israel and Iran both believe in the utility of force to achieve their ends. Israel, moreover, is being egged on by Donald Trump, the US president, who looks set to undermine the nuclear restraint accord Iran agreed with six global powers in 2015; and encouraged surreptitiously by a Saudi Arabian-led Sunni Arab camp that is trying to roll back Iranian influence in the Levant and the Gulf.
误判的风险仍然存在。以色列和伊朗都相信可以利用武力来达到目的。此外，以色列正受到美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的挑唆，后者似乎打算破坏2015年伊朗与六个大国签署的核协议;以色列还受到由沙特牵头的逊尼派阵营的暗中怂恿，该阵营试图削减伊朗在地中海黎凡特地区(Levant)和海湾地区的影响力。
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson tours the Middle East next week, and will presumably urge restraint on Israel. But it is Russia, which under President Vladimir Putin has nurtured relations with Israel even as it has aligned with its enemy Iran, which is the only player with the capability to talk the two antagonists down from what could otherwise become a mechanical escalation towards war.
美国国务卿雷克斯•蒂勒森(Rex Tillerson)本周访问中东，他可能会敦促以色列保持克制。但是，唯一有能力说服两个对手避免任由局势自动升级为战争的只有俄罗斯——在总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)的领导下，俄罗斯虽说已与以色列的敌人伊朗结盟，但它仍然与以色列巩固了关系。
