From Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy: Poland doesn’t see is itself as a target of the missile threat from Iran, the country the nascent U.S. missile shield is supposedly designed to thwart.

"If the mullahs have a target list we believe we are quite low on it," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with Foreign Policy during his trip to Washington Thursday. …

Sikorski admitted that Poland’s real interest in the system is to be an active player in the new emerging security infrastructure in Europe, which includes NATO’s endorsement of missile defense.

"Our part of Europe has so far very few NATO installations," he said. "This is the game that seems to be the next project, so we decided to get involved."  …

Poland didn’t intend to antagonize Russia by upgrading its ties to NATO and the United States.

"We were willing to give the U.S. a chunk of our territory for this facility, but we weren’t particularly looking forward to paying the price with worse relations with Russia," Sikorski said. "The Bush administration had told us, ‘We will fix it with the Russians, we will persuade them that this is no threat to them, don’t worry.’ And the problem appeared when the Russians appeared to be unpersuaded."  (photo: AFP/Getty)

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