周六在阿富汗南部，一个简易爆炸装置爆炸，两名美国军人死亡，另外两名受伤
这是自新十年开始以来，美国军队第一次在这场持续时间最长的战争中丧生，而此时华盛顿和德黑兰之间的紧张局势仍然很高。塔利班表示，这两个大国之间的争论不会阻碍与美国官员旨在结束战争的和平谈判。
根据国防部的长期政策，坚决支持官员宣布死亡的声明没有透露服役人员的身份，也没有提供进一步的细节，五角大楼在通知家属之前不会透露这些细节。但是美国军方官员告诉记者新闻周刊美国士兵在阿富汗坎大哈机场地面防御区袭击了一个简易爆炸装置。
声明称，袭击发生在北约坚决支持任务的一部分行动中。
一名塔利班发言人在推特上说，车上的所有美国人都被杀了，但是这个激进组织经常在他们的战场声明中夸大或捏造敌人的伤亡。
自2014年美国标志着阿富汗作战行动的结束以来，2019年死于与塔利班和其他叛乱组织作战的美国军人比任何一年都多。美国陆军一等中士迈克尔·詹姆斯·戈贝尔33岁的特种部队士兵，使去年的死亡人数达到20人。2018年有13人被杀，2017年有11人被杀。
戈布尔的死亡发生在圣诞节前两天，紧接着华盛顿邮报s阿富汗报纸这部由多个部分组成的系列影片强调了这场战争的严重管理不善，这场战争已经耗费了数十亿美元，并使成千上万的美国和阿富汗家庭永久破碎。根据该网站，自2001年以来，已有2400多名美国军人在阿富汗丧生icasualties.org。
2014年10月7日，在阿富汗赫尔曼德省纳德阿里的安全巡逻中，美国海军陆战队第二海军陆战队第一营布拉沃连第三排在一辆防雷伏击保护车内进行骑乘巡逻。阿富汗战争是美国历史上持续时间最长的战争。达斯汀·马奇中士/西南地区司令部/美国海军陆战队
阿富汗最近一次袭击发生在美国和中东另一个长期对手伊朗之间的长期不和急剧升级几天后。在伊拉克，美国和盟军人员居住的军事设施遭到伊朗导弹袭击周二回应特朗普政府上周暗杀的决定革命卫队圣城部队指挥官少将·卡西姆·苏莱曼尼。
伊朗官员表示，空袭结束了他们的报复，但一些地区代理人，主要是支持德黑兰的什叶派穆斯林民兵，继续对该地区的美军构成威胁。苏莱曼尼的继任者艾斯迈勒·卡尼站在从黎巴嫩到伊拉克再到阿富汗的各种武装运动的旗帜前发誓要进一步报复。
塔利班的旗帜并不存在，尽管美国长期以来一直指责伊朗支持逊尼派穆斯林激进分子，他们曾经是五角大楼和苏莱曼尼本人的共同敌人。今天，伊朗认为自己是阿富汗潜在和平进程的关键仲裁者，并认为美国是该地区破坏稳定的外国势力。
伊朗和塔利班都否认彼此有任何直接联系。除了寻求驱逐美军之外，这两个国家有着截然不同的意识形态和战略目标。
20世纪80年代的美国支持圣战叛乱分子反对苏联支持的政府，但后来在2001年9·11袭击后直接干预了阿富汗冲突，塔利班的盟友基地组织声称这是一次几乎前所未有的致命行动。一个由美国领导的联盟很快击败了塔利班政府，但此后一直面临致命的叛乱，至今仍在这个饱受战争蹂躏的国家取得进展。
特朗普政府已经启动了与塔利班的和平进程，但谈判一再陷入僵局，原因是叛乱分子和美国支持的喀布尔政府之间持续不断的暴力冲突，激进分子拒绝直接参与。但即使华盛顿试图从有史以来最长的战争中撤退，在伊拉克一场完全独立的冲突中部署美国军队也越来越受到质疑。
美国在伊拉克的军事存在可以追溯到2003年的一次入侵，那次入侵推翻了长期领导人萨达姆·侯赛因，但激起了逊尼派穆斯林的叛乱，并为什叶派穆斯林民兵打开了大门，其中许多人得到了伊朗的支持。五角大楼于2011年撤离，但三年后当一支被称为伊斯兰国军事组织(ISIS)的新的强大力量在伊拉克和邻国叙利亚取得闪电般的胜利时，五角大楼又回来了。
在这方面，美国和伊朗也发现自己在打同一场仗，但伊斯兰国领土哈利波特的失败和特朗普政府退出2015年与伊斯兰共和国的核协议，见证了华盛顿和德黑兰之间的对抗死灰复燃，这引发了新的、广泛的地区动荡，前线广阔且不确定。
巴格达呼吁美国和其他外国军队离开但是喀布尔继续寻求主要由五角大楼领导的北约联盟的保护。在另一条和平轨道上，包括伊朗、俄罗斯、中国、印度、塔吉克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦在内的地区大国就在上个月聚集一堂，希望共同努力稳定阿富汗局势。
尽管美国和伊朗的紧张局势在最近几周占据了头条新闻，并可能让许多国家陷入中间，但塔利班代表团团长苏海尔·沙欣周四告诉美国之音，国际争端不会损害该组织达成和平协议的前景。
沙欣说:“这些事态发展不会对和平进程产生负面影响，因为(美国和塔利班)和平协议已经敲定，只有(双方)才能签署。”。
TWO U.S. SERVICEMEMBERS KILLED, OTHERS WOUNDED BY IED IN AFGHANISTAN
Two American service members are dead and two others were wounded after an improvised explosive device detonated on Saturday in southern Afghanistan
These are the first U.S. troops to die in America's longest-running war since the start of the new decade and come as tensions between Washington and Tehran remain high. The Taliban have said the contention between the two powers would not hinder peace negotiations with American officials aimed at ending the war.
A statement from Resolute Support officials announcing the deaths did not identify the service members or provide further details, which the Pentagon does not disclose until families are notified, per long-standing Defense Department policy. But American military officials told Newsweek that the U.S. soldiers struck an improvised explosive device in the stretch of topography known as the ground defense area of Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.
The statement said the strike occurred during an operation that was a part of NATO's Resolute Support mission.
A Taliban spokesperson on Twitter said all American occupants in the vehicle had been killed, but the militant group often exaggerates or fabricates enemy casualties in their battlefield claims.
More American service members died fighting the Taliban and other insurgent groups in 2019 than in any other year since 2014, when the United States marked the end of combat operations in Afghanistan. U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Michael James Goble, 33, a Special Forces soldier, brought last year's death toll to twenty. Thirteen were killed in 2018, and 11 in 2017.
Goble's death came just two days before Christmas and follows the release of The Washington Post's Afghanistan papers, a multipart series underscoring the gross mismanagement of a war that has cost billions of dollars and left tens of thousands of both American and Afghan families permanently shattered. More than 2,400 U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the website icasualties.org.
U.S. Marines with 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, conduct a mounted patrol in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle during a security patrol in Nad Ali, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, October 7, 2014. The war in Afghanistan is the longest-running war in U.S. history.
The latest attack in Afghanistan came days after a dramatic escalation of a longstanding feud between the United States and another longtime adversary, Iran, in the Middle East. In Iraq, military installations housing U.S. and allied personnel came under Iranian missile fire Tuesday in response to the Trump administration's decision last week to assassinate Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani.
Iranian officials have said the salvo concluded their revenge, but a number of regional proxies, mostly Shiite Muslim militias supportive of Tehran, continue to pose a threat to U.S. forces in the region. Soleimani's successor, Esmail Qaani, vowed further retribution while standing in front of the flags of various armed movements hailing from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan.
The Taliban's banner was not present, though the U.S. has long charged Iran with backing the Sunni Muslim militants, once a common enemy of both the Pentagon and Soleimani himself. Today, Iran sees itself as a key arbiter in a potential Afghan peace process and views the U.S. as a destabilizing foreign power in the region.
Iran and the Taliban both deny any direct links to one another. Other than seeking the expulsion of U.S. forces, the two have vastly different ideological and strategic goals.
The U.S. in the 1980s backed mujahideen insurgentsagainst a Soviet-backed government, but later intervened directly in the Afghan conflict in the wake 9/11 attacks in 2001, an operation of near-unprecedented lethality claimed by the Taliban's ally, Al-Qaeda. A U.S.-led coalition quickly defeated the Taliban's government but has since faced a deadly insurgency still making gains today in the war-torn nation.
The Trump administration has initiated a peace process with the Taliban, but negotiations have repeatedly stalled, amid continued violence between insurgents and the U.S.-backed Kabul government, which the militants refuse to engage with direclty. But even as Washington seeks to draw back from its longest-ever war, the deployment of U.S. troops in an entirely separate conflict in Iraq has increasingly been questioned.
The U.S. military presence in Iraq dates back to a 2003 invasion that overthrew longtime leader Saddam Hussein but stirred a Sunni Muslim insurgency and opened the door for Shiite Muslim militias, many of which received Iranian support. The Pentagon withdrew in 2011 but returned three years later when a new, formidable force known as the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) made lightning gains throughout Iraq and neighboring Syria.
Here too, the U.S. and Iran brielfy found themselves fighting the same fight, but the defeat of ISIS's territorial khalifate and the Trump administration's withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic saw a resurgence in the Washington-Tehran rivalry that has since sparked new, widespread regional unrest with vast and uncertain frontlines.
Baghdad has called on U.S. and other foreign troops to leave, but Kabul continues to seek the protection of the NATO alliance, largely led by the Pentagon. On a separate peace track, regional powers including Iran, Russia, China, India, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan gathered as recently as last month in hopes of pooling their own efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.
Though U.S.-Iran tensions have dominated headlines in recent weeks and set many nations potentially caught in the middle on edge, Taliban delegation leader Suhail Shaheen told Voice of America on Thursday that the international spat would not hurt the group's prospects for a peace deal.
"The developments will not have negative impact on the peace process because the (U.S.-Taliban) peace agreement is finalized and only remains to be signed (by the two sides)," Shaheen said.
