President Obama announced on Thursday that his administration will scrap former President George W. Bush’s planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic and instead deploy a reconfigured system aimed more at intercepting shorter-range Iranian missiles. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala - via Tom Friedman, Publish2 (U.S.), New York Times (Most Emailed), Google News (U.S.)
It amounts to one of the biggest national security reversals by the new administration, one that will upset Czech and Polish allies and possibly please Russia, which adamantly objected to the Bush plan. But Obama administration officials stressed that they were not abandoning missile defense, only redesigning it to meet the more immediate Iranian threat.
The Obama review of missile defense was influenced in large part by evidence that Iran has made significant progress toward developing medium-range missiles that could threaten Europe, even as the prospects of an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States remain distant.
