Obama's anti-Iran missile defense overhaul is fraught with danger

HDEBKAfile Exclusive Analyis

The day US president Barack Obama announced he was abandoning plans for a missile shield and radar position in Poland and the Czech Republic Thursday, Sept. 17, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying in a press interview: "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel" and "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel." Responding to a question about Iran's nuclear program, he went on to say: "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat," although he did view Iran as a challenge to the whole world.

Asked in private what he meant, Barak shifted slightly by explaining: At this minute, Iran does not threaten Israel's survival."

Brig. Tal Rousso, head of operations in the IDF chief command, echoed the minister's theme in a radio interview Saturday, Sept. 19,

Are we to understand from these statements that the Iranian menace has suddenly gone away?

Hardly, when Friday, Sept. 18, the Israeli minister's reply came from the horse's mouth: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again termed the Holocaust "a lie" and declared "Israel has no future," while Tehran's mouthpiece in Beirut, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, used his favorite language to call Israel "a tumor which must be rooted out."

Both addressed mass-events marking "Jerusalem Day," which is dedicated annually to the struggle against Israel. Ahmadinejad said every Muslim is bound to participate in this "struggle" as his sacred duty.

The defense minister's over-confident downgrade of the Iranian menace recalls former chief of staff Dan Halutz's boast just before the 2006 Lebanon war, an eruption he failed to predict, that Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas were no threat to Israel's survival.

Four years later, Israel has still not rid itself of the missiles and rockets the two terror groups point against its population, or recovered from the strategic fallout of failing to defeat them, the most prominent outcome being Iran's elevation to the status of regional power.

DEBKAfile's political sources suggest a pragmatic context for Barak's controversial U-turn:

Next week, straight after the New Year festival, he and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu set off for the United States. Netanyahu stays in New York to address the UN General Assembly, while the defense minister heads to Washington for talks at the Pentagon and National Security Council, where he hopes for a red carpet welcome.

But he will find a much more complex situation there than he expects.

Obama's decision is running into heated opposition in the US capital. To fend off charges that he surrendered to Moscow, his administration released a new intelligence assessment Friday night, Sept. 18, according to which early US estimates of Iran's ability to attain long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, set for 2012-2015, have been scaled down to 2020 and are therefore a decade away.

Defense secretary Robert Gates was even more reserved: "I am more familiar with the risk of over-reliance on intelligence than anybody because I've seen how often it's been wrong," he said, adding "The system proposed by Obama was flexible enough to be adjusted if the Iranians develop a capability sooner than the intelligence is saying."

In justifying the decision to shelve the missile -radar interception program in favor of a revamped land-and- sea-based system, Gates and others have nonetheless relied on intelligence reports which estimate that Iran is now emphasizing medium- and short-range missiles that could not be shot down from Poland.

A retired head of the Pentagon's missile defense agency, Henry "Trey" Obering, said he was very surprised by the new assessment which "was dramatically different from what we were told last spring. To me, it flies in the face of what is observable," he said.

He called the Obama administration's hope for Moscow to reciprocate by influencing the Iranians to disarm or not pursue their nuclear program as risky. "There are a lot of eggs in that basket," Obering warned.

DEBKAfile's Washington sources stress that the Obama administration's approach to Iran's missile development, reflected in the Israeli defense minister's astonishing change of tune on Iran, is part and parcel of its approach to Iran's nuclear program.

In both cases, the White House acknowledges Iran is close to, or at, the penultimate steps of a capability to produce long-range ballistic missiles and a nuclear bomb, but assumes that the rulers of the Islamic Republic have stopped short before ordering the last step, namely, making them operational.

The Obama administration, like its predecessor, appears to be willing to leave Tehran with the option of crossing that last threshold when its radical rulers see fit, partly in order to cut defense costs at a time of recession.

But Israel cannot afford this luxury; nor can its Arab neighbors or the hundreds of thousands of US troops spread across the Middle East and Southwest Asia. European leaders should not sleep too quietly either.

DEBKAfile's military experts advise them all to take into account Iran's heavy investment in ballistic missile development and its attainment of a high level of advanced technology. Missiles are assigned to be Iran's primary aerial assault arm and substitute for its ageing air force. Updating an air fleet based on jets of 1950s vintage would require a multibillion dollar outlay for purchasing new aircraft and training air crews, whereas the price tag for missiles is a lot smaller.

At present, the Iranian industry is turning out large numbers of ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 km.

As for long-range versions, missile experts agree that since launching a two-stage, solid-fuel-power rocket into orbit, Iran has shown itself capable of producing missiles for striking any point on earth with a targeting error margin of no more than 20 meters.

It is true that Tehran is not known to have given the go-ahead for full production of these long-range weapons as yet, but unknown to Western intelligence, the first stages of production may well be secretly in progress synchronously with Iran's hidden nuclear device and warhead programs.

Obama's decision to scrap US anti-missile weapons deployments in Europe ignores Iran's rapidly advancing long-range missile program, just as the Bush and Clinton administrations turned a blind eye to the uranium enrichment infrastructure Tehran set up for military purposes during their tenures.

In Israel, the game-changing significance of the US president's decision to overhaul America's defense strategy against the Iranian missile threat and the Gates exegesis were played down or not fully comprehended.

Both resorted to polished diplomatic, audience-friendly language to make the surprising decision go down smoothly when they made their announcement Sept. 17.

But Gen. James Cartwright, US Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, who followed their announcements, gave it straight from the shoulder by clearly listing the United States order of priorities:

The US homeland, such as the (hypothetic) narrow strip down the East Coast from Philadelphia to Washington, which we must defend;

Second: US forces around the world;

Third: NATO countries, our allies;

Fourth: Friends like Israel.

This order of priorities ought to have acted as a wake-up call for Jerusalem, a word of warning not to try and shelter under the umbrella of a world power which places Israel's security or indeed survival only in fourth place on its scale of priorities. Obama's determination that America's safety is assured after his decision to abandon its missile defense system in East Europe does not make Israel secure by any means.

Israel's defense minister needs to open his ears to America's real agenda and scan his immediate neighborhood rather than dancing to the Obama tune.