Will Russia quid some pro quo for missile defense scrapping?

The Obama administration is scrapping a missile defense program that was to have stationed an interceptor system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Via Ben Smith at Politico, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) makes it clear that he expects a quid pro quo from Russia, which had strongly objected to the system — he wants Russia to drop its shilly-shallying on Iran sanction:

It is no secret that this missile defense shield has been a thorn in Russia’s side. President Obama is clearly demonstrating his willingness to reset relations between our two countries, and the Russians should return the gesture. It is time for Russia to join our push to impose stricter sanctions on Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program

Schumer anticipated such a "transactional" arrangement at the Orthodox Union’s annual Senate lunch on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal story I linked to above suggests otherwise:

Russia on Thursday welcomed the news but said it saw no reason to offer concessions in return.

Over at National Review, Cliff May, the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, reminds us that an engine driving the initiative was the protection of Israel from an Iranian attack:

Iran’s ruling mullahs have the largest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the Middle East; simultaneously, they are working overtime to develop nuclear weapons. This poses an increasing threat to Israel (Tehran’s explicitly stated goal is to “wipe Israel off the map”), to the U.S. (a “world without America is attainable,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said), and to Europe as well (the softest targets are often the most tempting).

(snip)

To defend Europe — and American troops stationed there — against the possibility of a missile attack from Iran would  require a “Third Site.” The U.S. currently maintains one ground-based missile site in Fort Greely, Alaska, and a second at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Third Site would be in Poland (ten missile interceptors) and the Czech Republic (a radar installation). This would provide “the fastest and most cost-effective protection against the long-range missiles that Iran is projected to have by 2015,” noted Lt. Gen. Trey Obering (ret.), former head of the Missile Defense Agency, and Eric Edelman, fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, in a recent op-ed. They noted, too, that such interceptors have been thoroughly tested.

I wrote about this a couple of years ago; Bush administration officials laid out the defend-Israel rationale for the program at a May 2007  congressional hearing:

The joint hearing last Thursday of two U.S. House of Representatives subcommittees – Europe, chaired by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), and Terrorism and Nonproliferation, chaired by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif. ) – was called because of Democratic skepticism about Bush administration plans to expand missile defense in Europe.

The stake, Bush administration officials told Wexler and Sherman, who are both Jewish, was Israel’s defense.Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Referring to possible war between Israel and the Palestinians, this is what the Iranian president stated to our European friends,” Fried said. “ ‘We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in the region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine and you may get hurt.’"

Iran was using a classic Cold War strategy of threatening others with nuclear attack in order to isolate the true target, Fried said – in this case, Israel.

"The situation we want to avoid is one where Europe would be in a position of absolute vulnerability through an Iranian nuclear arsenal, even a small one, thereby decoupling trans-Atlantic security, and also giving Iran an ability to use its other forces – its support for terrorism in the Middle East, and perhaps at some point conventional forces – to threaten Israel,” Fried said.