(单词翻译:单击)
“Your ardent Hezbollah guy would argue that fighting Israel is more important than worrying about your neighbor’s house being blown up in another war,” says Nicholas Blanford, a Lebanon-based senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank.
大西洋理事会(美国智库)驻黎巴嫩高级研究员尼古拉斯·布兰福德表示：“真主党狂热分子辩称，与以色列作战比担心邻居的房子在另一场战争中被炸毁更重要。”
“But pragmatically, the Hezbollah leadership knows that if they are seen as responsible for starting a war that is going to turn Lebanon into a car park, there is going to be a huge backlash against them, not just from Christians and Sunnis and Druze, but from their own [Shiite] constituency,” says Mr. Blanford, author of the book “Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel.”
《真主党战士：真主党与以色列的三十年斗争内幕》一书的作者布兰福德说：“但实事求是地说，真主党领导层知道，如果他们被视为发动了一场将黎巴嫩变成停车场的战争, 那么他们将会遭到巨大的反对，不但基督徒、逊尼派教徒和德鲁兹会反对，而且他们自己的支持者什叶派也会反对。”
“They are pushing the envelope more now, but they are very much keeping it within limits. At the end of the day, Hezbollah does not have leeway to go and start a war with Israel; that’s the choice of Iran,” says Mr. Blanford.
“他们现在正在试探底线，但他们大多在底线内活动。说到底，真主党没有余地去和以色列开战; 这是伊朗的选择，”布兰福德说。
“The Iranians are not going to be happy if Hezbollah triggers a massive war with Israel” over a minor border dispute, “because the Iranians invested all this time, effort, weaponry, and money in Hezbollah to serve as a deterrent for its own interests,” including its nuclear program.
“如果真主党因为一个小小的边界争端就与以色列爆发大规模战争，伊朗人不会高兴，因为伊朗人在真主党身上投入了这么多时间、精力、武器和金钱，以作为维护自身利益的威慑，”包括核计划。
Indeed, Iran would appear to have little immediate interest in a Hezbollah-Israel battle: A U.S.-Iran deal is reportedly in the works to free five Iranian American dual nationals held in Iran, in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds.
事实上，伊朗似乎对真主党和以色列的战争没有什么直接的兴趣：据报道，美国和伊朗正在达成一项协议，旨在释放被关押在伊朗的五名伊朗裔美国人，以换取解冻60亿美元的伊朗资金。
Iran is also beginning to reconcile with U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, after years of severed ties.
伊朗也开始与美国的盟友沙特阿拉伯和解，此前两国断绝关系多年。
And Iran’s own domestic scene has been troubled in the past year by months of anti-regime protests, an economy damaged by U.S.-led sanctions and by mismanagement, and questions about the succession to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
过去一年里，伊朗发生数月的反政府抗议活动、美国主导的制裁与管理不善对经济造成的损害，以及关于最高领袖阿亚图拉·阿里·哈梅内伊接班人的问题使得伊朗国内局势陷入困境。
Still, Hezbollah is battle-hardened and turning its attention again to Israel, after fighting successfully for nearly a decade in Syria – alongside Iran and Russia – to preserve the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
尽管如此，久经沙场的真主党再次将注意力转向以色列。此前，为维护巴沙尔·阿萨德总统的统治，真主党与伊朗和俄罗斯在叙利亚共同作战近十年。
Morale has notably improved since the hardest days of the Syrian entanglement, when the flow of Iranian money was tight and some fighters questioned a mission not targeted at Israel.
自叙利亚冲突最艰难的日子过后，真主党士气明显提高了。叙利亚冲突的那段日子，伊朗资金流动紧张，一些战士质疑一项不攻击以色列的任务。
When Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Hezbollah last month that Israel would return Lebanon to the “Stone Age” in any new conflict, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah replied within days, highlighting Israel’s internal turmoil and boasting that “all available evidence” indicated that Israel, too, would be “returned” to the Stone Age.
上个月，以色列国防部长约阿夫·加兰特警告真主党，在任何新的冲突中，以色列会让黎巴嫩回到“石器时代”，真主党领袖哈桑·纳斯鲁拉在几天内就做出了回应，强调以色列的内部动荡，并吹嘘“所有现有证据”表明以色列也会“回到”石器时代。
“We definitely have no problem with what is happening in Israel; we are watching very closely,” says a ranking Hezbollah officer reached in a tiny village in southern Lebanon, who gave the name Ahmad.
“我们对以色列正在发生的事情绝对没有意见; 我们正在密切关注，”黎巴嫩南部一个小村庄里一位名叫艾哈迈德的真主党高级官员说。
Wearing a blue polo shirt and with the sunburned arms of a farmer, Ahmad laughs when asked to compare Hezbollah’s readiness now to 2006.
当被问及真主党现在的准备情况与2006年相比时，艾哈迈德笑了起来，他穿着一件蓝色马球衫，手臂晒得像个农民。
