Old Habits Die Hard: US Reluctant to Scrap European Missile Defense System

"There is another angle to Washington’s interest in mending fences with Iran than just a dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program. That’s why yesterday Obama hailed as 'historic' only the nuclear agreement between us, and nothing else," Reza Hojjat Shamami, a prominent Iranian political analyst and expert on Eurasian affairs, told Sputnik.

"I think many would like to hear from him that Washington and Tehran are now friends, but friends do not threaten each other, and the US missile defense installations in Eastern Europe are still targeting Iran and Russia. All this meaning that America’s geopolitical adversaries remain the same," Reza Hojjat Shamami added.

While expanding its anti-missile network across Europe, the US, along with its allies, reassured Russia that the bases would target Iran and North Korea and would even enhance Russia’s security as well. However Moscow has always doubted the real purpose of the initiative.

The Iranian political analyst's opinion was fully echoed by Orhan Gafarli, an expert on Eurasian security with Turkey’s Center for Strategic Analysis.

"I’m certain that with the agreements clinched by Iran and the world powers in Lausanne there is no reason whatsoever for America to deploy its missile defenses in Eastern Europe. If these deployments close to the Russian borders continue it will become perfectly clear that these systems were actually meant for use against Russia. In this case Washington would find it real hard to keep misleading the world about its real intentions," Orhan Gafarli told Sputnik.

When asked about the chances of Washington curbing its missile defense bases in Europe, William Engdahl, an award-winning American-German geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant, said the chances of this were “zero”.

"After the Bush-Cheney administration announced in early 2007 that the US would place a balliastic missile defense infrastructure in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against rogue states like Iran and North Korea, President Vladimir Putin made an extraordinary address at the international security conference in Munich where he said that NATO essentially put its frontline forces on the Russian border. And that it had nothing to do with modernization of NATO or the defense of Europe, that it had to do with targeting nuclear installations of the Russian Federation," Willim Engdahl told Sputnik. 

"We see that more clearly today that [the US] scored a coup in Ukraine last February to put a bunch of puppet figures and a quasi-government mandated to do nothing but create terror and killings that would try to provoke Russia into a military intervention, so that NATO could say that 'we are justified in missile defense, now we have to protect Europe against Russia.' It never was about Iran, it was about a nuclear first strike," he said.

"The US is controlled by a bunch of American oligarchs that have lost their way and have no idea how to hold on to their power except by doing what they did in the past – and it’s not working… Europe, Germany and France are now on the verge of a breakout from Washington’s policies…," William Engdahl added.