Poland’s Sikorski says Iran posed no direct threat to US or Europe before strikes

Poland’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski said that, prior to the US and Israeli strikes, Iran had posed no “direct threat” to Europe or the United States.

In an interview published Thursday by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita, Sikorski said: “The United States and Israel naturally have their own threat assessments, but personally, I did not perceive a ‘direct threat’ from Iran to the US, Europe, or even Israel.”

The Polish official added, however, that “pre-emptive wars can sometimes be justified,” arguing that had a pre-emptive war been waged against Nazi Germany, “the world could have been spared enormous suffering.”

Sikorski made clear that Warsaw had “no such plan” to join the war against Iran: “At this moment, there is a war on our border—an aggressive Russia with an imperialist state ideology flying drones through our airspace. We have a great deal to contend with here, in our own neighbourhood.”

Pointing to the Redzikowo military base—the US missile defence complex situated on Polish soil—Sikorski noted it “was built to detect and neutralise missiles that could threaten Europe and the United States,” and observed that Iran had “launched no such missiles.”

Nevertheless, Sikorski argued the two conflicts are intertwined, contending that Russia is backing Iran within what he described as the “Tehran-Moscow axis of evil.” “On both battlefields, civilian targets are being struck by the same types of weapons from the same source,” the minister said.

The Polish minister also reiterated the imperative for Europe to assume a far greater role in its own security: “The reason is that Europe—Western Europe in particular—has lived off the peace dividend for far too long and has de-industrialised in the field of defence.”