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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus about some of the new technologies…and new strategies… that are part of President Obama’s missile defense plan.

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MARCO WERMAN: Jonathan Marcus is the BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent.  So, Jonathan, despite all the changes announced today, the Obama Administration says it’s still seriously committed to missile defense.  What has really changed.

JONATHAN MARCUS: Well, it’s a fundamental recasting of the Missile Defense Program, really to re-orientate it towards existing and very near-term threats.  That’s Iran’s short and medium range ballistic missiles, and away from what many people regarded as simply a virtual or abstract threat, which was the idea that Iran would any time soon be able to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.  The Americans believe that they have re-assessed their intelligence picture.  They believe that Iran’s real effort is on short and medium range weapons and they, of course, also believe that America has the kinds of defenses it needs to deal with that type of system.

WERMAN: Right, I mean, as far as Iran goes, though, I mean, it’s interesting that this is being announced, and yet during the campaign, President Obama was talking about engaging with Iran.  What’s the signal for Iran?

MARCUS: Well, I think the signal is that the Americans want to engage but equally they want to take precautions if that engagement fails, and one has to say that I don’t think even though we expect talks between the Europeans and others and the Americans and the Iranians quite soon, maybe as early as next month, I don’t think anybody is expecting dramatic changes there.  I think many people look at the domestic political situation in Iran and wonder if the Iranians are in any position to start making the sorts of concessions that the Americans in western countries want.  So I think the Americans are hedging their bets.  They’re trying to engage with the Iranians, but it’s very clear that their new missile defense plans are directed as much at a potential Iranian threat as the earlier plans were of the previous Bush Administration.

WERMAN: As you said, the U.S. says that the system works well, but many skeptics say that the missile defense shield emperor has no clothes.  Does any of this stuff really work?  Has it been proven in real time?

MARCUS: Well, I think some of it has been proven.  I think the problem is essentially this, that if you want to defense a relatively small area against a threat that you are aware of the nature of the threat and its particular characteristics, then you have a pretty good chance of shooting things down providing that the attacker just doesn’t simply swamp the defenses with large numbers of missiles.  When you look, for example, at a country like Israel which is thought to have really pretty capable anti-missile defenses that Israel is a pretty small country.  Defending something like the territory of the whole of East and West and Central Europe that is maybe another problem.  Nothing is foolproof but I think in terms of the shorter and medium range missile threat, the technology is much more advance and that’s one of the reasons frankly why the Obama Administration has decided to make this shift to deal with a threat that actually exists with technology that is already tried and tested.

WERMAN: But does this shift, the news today, suddenly cast Obama as hawkish on missile defense do you think?

MARCUS: I don’t think it casts him as hawkish.  I mean, there will inevitably be politics surrounding this and there will be politics at home back in the United States.  There will be a lot of politics in Europe.  I think this is a pragmatic and realistic approach by the new administration.  He says, after all, that the defenses against the much longer-range missiles that Iran might have one day, ten, fifteen, twenty years ahead, that sort of research will slowly continue.  So the Americans aren’t abandoning that altogether.  But I think, you know, there is an important European dimension to this, and that is in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe there is a growing sense of unease about America’s degree of attention toward their concerns.  They see a rising Russia.  They see the buffeting of the financial crisis, problems with Democracy in a number of Eastern and Central European countries.  And I think what we heard today from the Americans despite the shift of gear in the missile defense plans was a very strong message, particularly from the Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Europe’s security remains a key concern for the United States, and that may go some way towards reassuring some of these Eastern and Central Europeans.  So I think we’re worrying that the Obama Administration just didn’t’ get Europe, that they thought that Europe was done business, that they’d moved onto the Middle East, to the Asia-Pacific Region relations with China and so on, and the Eastern and Central Europeans in particular were saying, “Hang on. We’ve still got problems here back on the old continent.”

WERMAN: The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus.  Thank you, Jonathan.

MARCUS: A pleasure.  Thank you.

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