A senior Russian official has once again criticized NATO for its ongoing so-called missile shield installations across Europe, implying that a so-called threat from Iran was merely a pretext for such a deployment by the Western military alliance.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russian deputy prime minister and Moscow’s former representative to NATO, said the military alliance still plans to keep the controversial missile shield in Europe despite a mutual understanding recently reached between Iran and the P5+1 over Tehran’s nuclear case, RT reported.
The missile shield in Europe stays because “the Missile Defense System was never about Iran,” said the Russian official in reaction to recent comments by NATO’s spokesman Oana Lungescu, who said “The threat to NATO countries posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to increase… the framework [of the Iran nuclear program] agreement does not change that fact.”
Moscow has long protested the placement of such bases along its borders, saying the aim of the Eastern European system is to encircle Russia. Washington, however, claims the bases are directed against an alleged potential threat from Iran.
Meanwhile the head of the Russian State Duma Foreign Relations Committee Aleksey Pushkov has also described the official US justification for erecting the missile system in Europe as a “fairy tale.”
“NATO won’t give up on the missile shield in Europe? Who would have thought it! These fairy tales about a ‘threat’ from Iran and North Korea were for idiots. Now NATO doesn’t even have these fairy tales,” Pushkov stated in a Twitter post cited in the report.
On Thursday, Iran and the P5+1 states – Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany – issued a joint statement, which would serve as a guideline in the future talks aimed at reaching a final deal on the Iranian nuclear issue by the June 30 deadline.
Russia has always blasted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for its eastward expansion calling it a direct threat to Moscow.
