Israel hails Turkey-NATO agreement

The Israeli Foreign Ministry claims that Ankara has finally conceded to a NATO proposal for deploying missile systems on Turkish soil “against Iran’s possible missile attack.”

“Despite all its effort to achieve unity and cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey finally accepted NATO’s demand to install radar systems against possible missile attacks from Iran,” the website of Israeli Foreign Ministry, Hamdami said on Sunday.

This is while Turkey has repeatedly announced that it does not perceive Iran as a threat and that any plans which single out Iran would be unacceptable.

“Mentioning one country, Iran… is wrong and will not happen. A particular country will not be targeted…. We will definitely not accept that,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul had said earlier this month.

The report on Hamdami added that “also, the summit of heads of State of NATO members was able to bring Russia closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and take a big step in improving the relation of European countries with the United States.”

“Some of the evaluations say by leading the summit of heads of state of NATO members and through its effort before the summit, the United States has achieve two accomplishments,” it added.

“On the one hand it seems that Russia has ceased its previous objections with deploying NATO (and the US) missile system, and on the other hand, Turkey which had announced it would not act against Iran even in the framework of NATO finally surrendered to the demands of other NATO member states.”

Turkey is the closest NATO member to Iran and deploying missile systems in this country could be more effective that in a European state, the article concluded.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in October that “we do not perceive any threat from any neighbor countries and we do not think our neighbors form a threat to NATO.”

Following Turkey’s demand, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said last week that “it (the final plans of the missile system) need not mention the names of any particular country.”

Rasmussen said a total of 30 countries possess ballistic systems capable of hitting Europe, adding that “this is reality; you don’t need to mention names.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday called the deployment of a NATO missile system in Turkey a ‘game’, saying “The era of adopting a military approach in the interaction of governments and nations, and in resolving conflicts is over.”

Mottaki added that the missile system plan showed NATO leaders “have been distanced from the realities of global relations.”