In December 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate announced, “We assess with moderate confidence [that] Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.” Well, Tehran just admitted it has a second uranium enrichment facility Fuel produced there could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Further, even if the intelligence is completely accurate, it’s making a distinction without a difference. If Iran is developing short-range missiles, it’s also developing know-how and technology that would prove useful in a long-range missile program.
Stranger still is the administration’s claim that we don’t need the sites in eastern Europe since “U.S. missile-defense capabilities and technologies have advanced in recent years.” That ought to be an argument to deploy them even more widely, not to scrap one site because the defenses elsewhere (say in Alaska or California) are working.
Besides, this runs counter to recent arguments from the administration that missile defense isn’t working. That’s the reason it gave this year for moving to terminate a number of missile-defense programs and slash $1.6 billion from such programs in fiscal year 2010.
As historian Bernard Lewis has warned, the U.S. can’t afford to tell the world that “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” Yet we’re doing exactly that by abandoning promises to our allies and failing to share the benefits of our missile defenses. Canceling the planned sites is a self-inflicted wound we cannot afford.