PROGRESS ON THE “THIRD SITE”...
Capping months of intensive bilateral negotiations, the Czech government has formally signed on to the Bush administration’s plan for a European missile defense site. On July 8th, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg officially signed an initial agreement for the deployment of early warning sensors on the territory of the former Soviet satellite as part of Bush administration’s efforts to erect a European leg for its missile defense program, the Associated Press reported the same day.
The next hurdle for the missile defense project is formal legislative approval from the Czech parliament – something which officials in Prague anticipate in the near future. “I think it is possible to make it by the end of this year," Deputy Foreign Minister Tomas Pojar has told reporters in comments carried by Reuters (July 9). "It is probable that the final vote will be after the election in the United States, however that does not mean that it would be after the new president takes office."
...DRAWS RUSSIAN IRE...
Moscow, meanwhile, has responded to the news with an ultimatum of its own. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in Japan on to attend the Group of Eight summit, expressed his government’s “distress” over news of the deal – and warned of a potential Russian strategic response. "We have repeatedly underscored — both earlier and during this summit I spoke of this — that questions of European security must be resolved in a different way," the Associated Press reports Medvedev as saying on July 9th. If a formal agreement is ratified in Prague, he said, Russia “will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods."
...AMID DOUBTS ABOUT TIMING
But will the Bush administration’s missile defense plan materialize in time to confront the central threat against which it is oriented? According to some experts, the answer is “no.” London’s Telegraph newspaper reports in its June 23rd issue that funding delays and political acrimony over the “third site” in Congress mean that the Pentagon could miss its current planned deployment date of 2013 by as much as five years. And if there are considerable delays, experts cited by the paper say, the European missile defense architecture could end up emerging after Iran has acquired intercontinental missile capability.
IRAN’S MISSILE TESTS...
Iran, meanwhile, is bracing for potential military action over its nuclear program. On July 9th, the Islamic Republic carried out a high-profile military test of its ballistic missile capabilities, firing nine medium- and extended-range variants of the Shahab-3 missile in the Persian Gulf. The move comes as a response to mounting rhetoric about the possibility of military action in response to Iran’s persistent nuclear ambitions. The drill "demonstrate[s] our resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language," the Associated Press (July 9) cites General Hossein Salami, a commander of Iran’s feared Revolutionary Guard, as saying. "Our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch."
...AND THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Iran’s missile tests have elicited very different responses from the presidential hopefuls on the U.S. campaign trail, the Voice of America (July 9) reports. Speaking to the media while on a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain cited the Iranian exercises as justifying the need for a robust missile defense program. Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, however, has taken a different tack. Consistent with his advocacy of negotiations with the Iranian regime, Obama has told various news programs that the Iranian missile test underscores the necessity for reinvigorated diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.