LONDON — "Some experts have doubts about the missile shield concept," as the more cautious reporters put it. (That example comes from the BBC Web site.) A franker journalist would say that the ballistic missile defense (BMD) system that the Bush administration planned to put into Poland and the Czech Republic, and that President Barack Obama has just canceled, has never worked and shows few signs of ever doing so.
Obama has done the right thing. It saves money that would have been wasted, and it repairs relations with Russia, which was paranoid about the system being so close to its borders. And the cancellation also signals a significant decline in the paranoia in Washington about Iran.
"Paranoia" is the right word in both cases. Iran doesn't have any missiles that could even come within range of the BMD system that was to go into Poland and the Czech Republic, let alone nuclear warheads to put on them. According to U.S. intelligence assessments, Iran is not working on nuclear weapons, nor on missiles that could reach Europe, let alone the United States. Washington's decision to deploy the system anyway was so irrational that it drove the Russians into paranoia as well.