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Nobody watching President Barack Obama talking to President Dmitry Medvedev to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and addressing a university audience could have failed to notice that Moscow was not a pre-Presidential election Berlin audience. The first was courteous, the second displayed no emotion and the third was cool. No chemistry there; added to which his visit was overshadowed by Michael Jackson's funeral. The main achievement was a missile deal that favoured Moscow, which did not go down well with his political opponents at home and has yet to receive the Senate's fiat. But there was also agreement reached to allow...

Original newz story - Click here As we pointed out earlier today, Reuters cited US military officials who said that the U.S. military’s THAAD anti-missile defense system has “reached initial intercept capability” in South Korea, although they added that it would not be fully operational for some months. Just hours after the announcement, Beijing lashed out at DC and demanded an “immediate halt” to the controversial US missile shield. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang voiced the government’s position against the move during a briefing on Tuesday. “We oppose the deployment of the US missile system to South Korea and...

Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama http://observer.com/2016/10/putins-activation-of-iskander-m-ballistic-missile-is-a-message-to-obama/ Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama The KGB officer in the Kremlin seeks one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office By John R. Schindler • 10/07/16 11:00am Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Prince Albert II of Monaco (not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 6, 2016. / AFP / POOL AND AFP / YURI KADOBNOV Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack...

The US has activated a land-based missile defence station in Romania, which will form part of a larger and controversial European shield. Senior US and Nato officials attended the ceremony in Deveselu, southern Romania. The US says the Aegis system is a shield to protect Nato countries from short and medium-range missiles, particularly from the Middle East. But Russia sees it as a security threat - a claim denied by Nato. * * * Russia says installing such shields in countries on its doorstep is a threat to its security. "Who will this system be against?" President Vladimir Putin's spokesman,...

Yet of all of the secessionist movements from the Atlantic to the Urals, none imperils a vital interest of the United States. None is really our business. And none justifies a war with Russia. Indeed, what is it about this generation of Americans that makes us such compulsive meddlers in the affairs of nations we could not find on a map? Consider if you will our particular affliction: Putin paranoia.

NATO officials are considering deploying a long-planned missile defense system—aimed at protecting Europe from attacks from the Middle East—against Russia as well, Spiegel has learned. Calls for such an expansion to the system’s remit, which is backed by the United States, are growing in Poland as well as in NATO member states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. […] But the majority of NATO members, especially Germany, are opposed to the proposal, warning that it could result in an unnecessary provocation of Moscow. …

President Vladimir Putin stepped up criticism Thursday of a U.S.-led NATO missile defense system in Europe, reiterating Russia’s newly-minted argument that the nuclear agreement reached with Iran last month has removed both the threat and the West’s justification for the shield. “It was the Iranian nuclear program in particular that at one time served as the main argument for deploying the missile defense system,” Putin said during an annual address to both houses of the Russian parliament. “Now what’s happening? The Iranian nuclear program is going away, but the missile defense system stays—and not only stays but continues to be...

Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State, who met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) here yesterday, proposed a strong missile shield to protect Gulf Arab states from Tehran and sought to work with them to help end the violence in Iran's ally Syria. Clinton said: "It is a US priority to help the GCC build a regional missile defense architecture" against what that country sees as a looming ballistic missile threat from Iran. Clinton said that she looked forward to discussing the wide range of common strategic concerns, including preventing Iran from acquiring a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is leaving open the possibility of giving Moscow certain secret data on U.S. interceptor missiles due to help protect Europe from any Iranian missile strike. A deal is being sought by Washington that could include classified data exchange because it is in the U.S. interest to enlist Russia and its radar stations in the missile-defense effort, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Tuesday in written replies to Reuters. No decision has been made yet on whether the United States would offer data about the interceptors' "velocity at burnout," or VBO, said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April...

MOSCOW -- A deal with Washington to assuage Moscow's concerns about U.S. missile defense plans in Europe is still possible, but time is running out, Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday. Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed that Moscow will take retaliatory action if moves by Washington to deploy missile shield components around Europe pose a threat to Russia. ... Moscow agreed in 2010 to consider NATO's proposal to cooperate on the U.S.-led missile shield, but the talks have run into a deadlock over how the system should be operated. Russia has insisted that it should be run jointly, which NATO has rejected. ......

Documents from the State Department published by WikiLeaks show that the Obama administration surrendered the missile shield previously planned by the Bush administration to Europe because of Russian demands, not because of any supposed intel reports. The original missile defense scheme was devised by the Bush administration, which persuaded Poland and the Czech Republic to authorize missile defense systems (ten unarmed interceptors and a radar) to be deployed on their soil.  In April 2008, Bush outmaneuvered Vladimir Putin by obtaining an endorsement of this scheme from all NATO allies before the Russian leader reached Bucharest for the NATO-Russia summit. Russia...

President Obama cancelled anti-missile shield plans in Poland and the Czech Republic to get Russia support for UN sanctions against Iran, documents made public by Wikileaks reveal. (snip) The whistle blowing web site, publishing diplomatic cables and other documents via The New York Times, the Guardian (UK) and other media outlets, show that George Bush’s anti-missile shield plan to station 10 interceptor rockets in Poland not far from the Kaliningrad (Russia) border and a radar system in the Czech Republic was seen as an obstacle by Washington in getting tougher sanctions against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

NATO will offer Russia access to some US military satellite data in exchange for its participation in a missile shield project for continental Europe, a Moscow newspaper reported Friday. The offer will come as part of a broader deal to be extended to Russia at the NATO-Russia Council that immediately follows the 28-member Alliance's November 19-20 summit in Lisbon, Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted a NATO source as saying. NATO officials in Brussels could not immediately confirm the report. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accepted an invitation to attend the talks, which besides long-range missile defences will also focus on NATO's activities...

After months of deliberations, the IDF has decided to store the Iron Dome anti-rocket system at an air force base in the center of the country and to deploy it only in cases of extreme rocket fire from either the Gaza Strip or southern Lebanon, senior military sources said on Sunday. The decision was made ahead of the planned announcement that Iron Dome had reached “initial operational capability,” initially scheduled for this month. On Sunday, top IDF officers told The Jerusalem Post that the initial operational capability would be postponed until the first quarter of 2011. The delay, the officers...

A Nato missile shield project that singles out Iran as a threat will be unacceptable to Turkey, President Abdullah Gul said in an interview broadcast Monday. “Nato is a defence organisation. A defence system is being developed against anyone in the world who has ballistic missiles and does not belong to Nato,” Gul said. “Mentioning one country, Iran… is wrong and will not happen. A particular country will not be targeted…We will definitely not accept that,” he said in an interview with the BBC’s Turkish service, aired on Turkish television. Nato and the United States want to set up a...

Israel's military has begun constructing a third battery of long-range, high-altitude Arrow anti-missile interceptors near Tel Aviv to boost defenses against Iranian ballistic missiles. The planned deployment, and a scramble to develop and install other systems to counter short- and medium-range missiles and rockets, underlines the Jewish state's growing fears that its cities and towns face a missile bombardment of unprecedented scale and ferocity. The existing batteries of Arrow-2 interceptors, jointly produced by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the Boeing Co., are deployed at an air force base in southern Israel and another near the city of Hadera in the...

The development raised further concerns that Turkish foreign policy was tilting outside the sphere of the Western alliance towards alignment with its eastern neighbour. A Turkish official said Ahmed Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, had opened "negotiations" on the targeting of the missiles at a preliminary meeting in Brussels last week. Turkey said it does not want the system to exclusively target any neighbouring country. "Within this frame, we do not lean towards the idea of defining countries like Iran, Syria and Russia as threats," a foreign ministry official said. "The minister has conveyed our opinion on the subject." Nato's policy...

National Security: The administration is ready to sign a treaty stripping us of our ability to defend ourselves against enemy nuclear missiles, including Iran's and North Korea's. In space, no one can hear you surrender. On Monday, the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, successfully shot down a ballistic missile launched from a ship's deck off Kauai, Hawaii. The test simulated an Iranian SCUD launched from the deck of a ship off the U.S. coast, which, if armed with a nuke, could devastate the American heartland. The simulated Scud was launched from...

The first-ever battery of US Patriot missiles to be deployed in Poland will arrive in late May, defence ministry spokesman Janusz Sejmej told AFP on Wednesday. "Following preparations and consultations, the first deployment of a battery of anti-missile Patriots will start around May 24 in Morag," Sejmej said. The Polish military base at Morag, in the Mazurian Lakes region, is some 250 kilometres (150 miles) north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometres (40 kilometres) from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory. Sejmej refused to say how long the deployment would last, but said it was "temporary". In February, Poland ratified...

Japan remains fully committed to building a linchpin multibillion-dollar missile interceptor with the United States, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency told Congress, even as U.S.-Japanese ties adjust to a new era. Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly said on Wednesday he had held several high-level program reviews with Japanese government officials since the Democratic Party of Japan's victory in the August 30, 2009, elections for the legislature's lower house. "They have indicated that they are in full support and their commitments are solid," he told the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee, referring to a Standard Missile-3 upgrade program in...