Moscow, December 14: A senior Russian official has dismissed the US claims that the deployment of its missile system in Europe is aimed at countering potential missile strikes from countries other than Russia and China.
“Moscow is in no doubt that the US anti-missile shield is aimed against Russia and China,” Secretary of the Russian National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with a Russian newspaper on Tuesday, Interfax news agency reported.
“Moreover, their further plans involve sending aircraft carriers and anti-ballistic missiles close to the Russian borders. Despite the solid arguments put forward by Moscow, our US partners refuse to give us legally binding guarantees on their missile plans,” Patrushev said.
He added that the two countries (Russia and the US) still have time to negotiate the issue.
Washington has claimed that its missile system project in Europe is designed to avert possible missile attacks by either Iran or North Korea, the two major Asian countries that have fiercely resisted US interference in their respective counties.
Russia’s envoy to NATO warned on July 28 that the United States might use the European missile plan to set the grounds for an attack on Iran.
“The missile defense system is not purely a defensive system,” Dmitry Rogozin said.
He added, “There are serious and authoritative experts in Russia and in other countries who fear that the creation of a European missile defense system, officially assigned the task of blocking a threat from Iran, may in fact be a pretext for preparing an attack on Iran.”
The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program.
Under pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv, the UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Tehran. The United States and the European Union have also adopted unilateral measures against the Islamic Republic in an effort to deter Western investments in Iran’s energy sector.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never pointed to any evidence indicating that Tehran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.
——Agencies