Front Row Washington Tracking U.S. politics

Do-over on missile defense — reading between the lines
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Posted by: Tabassum Zakaria
Tags: Front Row Washington, Barack Obama, George Bush, intelligence report, Iran, missile defense

President Barack Obama’s new missile defense plan is an exercise in reading between the lines.

Does it signal a diminished threat from Iran if he is scrapping the Bush-era system that was to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic? Obama’s plan would use missile interceptors based on ships.

Former President George W. Bush would rattle off Iran and threats in the same sentence so often that sometimes it seemed all roads to fear led to Tehran. He wanted the missile shield as protection. IRAN-MILITARY/PARADE

Obama said one factor guiding his decision was updated intelligence assessments of Iran’s missile programs that emphasized the threat of short- and medium-range missiles capable of reaching Europe.

So the unsaid line appears to be that the threat from a long-range missile is not prevalent.

Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence official, said it became evident that Iran was not reaching some of the milestones needed to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile before 2015 as an intelligence estimate in 1999 had predicted.

On the nuclear threat, we’ve learned that key judgments still stand from a 2007 intelligence report that said “with moderate confidence” Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.

IRAN/The timing of Obama’s announcement — the week before the U.N. General Assembly and G20 meetings where he will mix with other world leaders — is worth raising an eyebrow. Why give away a bargaining chip ahead of time?

The fact that the announcement comes on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, may be worth raising the other eyebrow.

Photo credit: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl (missile driven past picture of Iran’s supreme leader during parade in Tehran in April), Reuters/Raheb Homavandi (Man in Tehran reacts to a camera in April)