The US has put on hold a plan to deploy missiles in Poland and a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic as a defense against possible Iranian nuclear missiles. The Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, announced this afternoon 17 September that US President Barack Obama had called him just past midnight to inform him that the US “had reconsidered its intention to build a radar facility in the Czech Republic as a part of the missile defense system.”

The US signed an agreement with the Czech Republic and Poland in August 2008 to deliver and install 10 missile interceptors in Poland and the tracking station in the Czech Republic by 2012. They were meant to defend European countries from Iran and other “rogue” states. The BBC says that Obama ordered a review earlier this year, and the Pentagon has said that shelving the missile defense plan was a “major adjustment”.

The missile defense plan was “vigourously opposed” by Russia which saw it as a threat to its own nuclear arsenal. It was held to be an obstacle to talks meant to replace the 1980s era strategic arms reduction treaty, or Start, which expires in three months. BBC, Moscow Times

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