‘At the time, it required a leap of strategic foresight. Today, it looks like necessity’
By Frank A. Rose, Real Clear Wire
I Helped Build Europe’s Missile Defenses. Iran’s Strike on Diego Garcia Shows Why We Were Right to Deploy Missile Defense in Europe.
Nearly fifteen years ago, I sat across negotiating tables in Ankara, Bucharest, and Warsaw, working with our NATO allies on what was then a controversial question: Was the Iranian missile threat real—and urgent enough to justify building a new missile defense architecture across Europe?
At the time, the answer was far from obvious.
There were skeptics in Washington. Doubts in Europe. Opposition from Russia. Questions about cost, escalation, and whether we were overreacting to a threat that had not yet fully materialized. But we moved forward anyway.
Working with a dedicated interagency team from the State Department and the Department of Defense—and in close partnership with allies in Turkey, Romania, Poland, and Spain—we built what became the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA):
- A forward based radar in Turkey
- Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland
- Aegis destroyers equipped with SM-3 interceptors, homeported in Spain
At the time, it required a leap of strategic foresight. Today, it looks like necessity.
That reality came into sharp focus last week. Iran launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia—roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km) away—demonstrating a capability that many had long suspected but had not yet seen operationalized.