MOSCOW, May 19 (RIA Novosti) - A missile shield planned by the U.S. to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran could deploy, according to a study by U.S. and Russian experts.
The report, produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Brussels, concluded it would take Iran at least five years to build a nuclear warhead and a delivery system.
"The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel said.
The document, released on Tuesday, said the experts' conclusions were presented to U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in February.
The report said Iran's current arsenal was derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn were modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s.
"We believe that these components were likely transferred to North Korea illegally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russia was experiencing major political and economic chaos," the report states.
If Iran was to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.
"The more immediate danger comes from the military and political consequences that would follow if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons," the report says.
"The urgent task, therefore, is for Russia and the United States (and other states) to work closely together to seek, by diplomatic and political means, a resolution of the crisis surrounding the Iranian nuclear program," it adds, noting that this "could be helped if the issue of European missile defense were set aside."
The findings seem to strengthen the positions of Moscow, which has been at loggerheads with Washington over plans to deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe. The U.S. has signed agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland on the deployment of a radar station and 10 interceptor missiles by 2013.
Russia says the missile shield would be a threat to its national security while the U.S. has argued it is necessary to guard against the threat of missile attacks from states such as Iran.
