The United States is encouraging Middle Eastern nations to plan, buy and deploy an integrated system that would protect the region from missile strikes, the Middle East Times reported today (see GSN, July 8).
The missile shield, which would stretch from Kuwait in the north to Oman in the south, would primarily be intended to discourage Iran from firing nuclear or conventional missiles, high-level U.S. officials said at a meeting in Bahrain attended by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command (see related GSN story, today). Petraeus added that Arab states needed to bolster their current missile defenses.
A senior U.S. official mapping out the proposed defense system described it as "something not unlike" the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks potential missile threats to Canada and the United States (Claude Salhani, Middle East Times, Dec. 15).