It’s gone from a rumor on the Weekly Standard to a report from the Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials. The Obama Administration will abandon our missile defense shield in Europe, leaving our allies and millions of Americans vulnerable to nuclear attacks from rogue regimes.

WASHINGTON — The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

The U.S. will base its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Uh huh. The shield wouldn’t have been completed until 2012, meaning that Iran would have 3 more years to make progress before our defense goes on line. But we’re canceling the project because Iran hasn’t posed enough of a threat as of September 2009? Not buying it.

Here’s the real reason:

The Bush plan infuriated the Kremlin, which argued the system was a potential threat to its own intercontinental ballistic missiles. U.S. officials repeatedly insisted the location and limited scale of the system — a radar site in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland — posed no threat to Russian strategic arms.

The Obama administration’s assessment concludes that U.S. allies in Europe, including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, face a more immediate threat from Iran’s short- and medium-range missiles and will order a shift towards the development of regional missile defenses for the Continent, according to people familiar with the matter. Such systems would be far less controversial.

Critics of the shift are bound to view it as a gesture to win Russian cooperation with U.S.-led efforts to seek new economic sanctions on Iran if Tehran doesn’t abandon its nuclear program. Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has opposed efforts to impose fresh sanctions on Tehran.

Barack Obama is a liberal Democrat. What self-respecting liberal Democrat doesn’t abandon America’s national security priorities in order to appease a country that works against us every opportunity it gets?

We’re going to abandon a missile defense shield in Europe, a crucial aspect of our national defense system, in order to win Russian support on economic sanctions against Iran that won’t work? Only the Obama Administration could look at that scenario and find it attractive.

But the decision to shelve the defense system is all but certain to raise alarms in Eastern Europe, where officials have expressed concerns that the White House’s effort to “reset” relations with Moscow would come at the expense of U.S. allies in the former Soviet bloc. “The Poles are nervous,” said a senior U.S. military official.

I don’t blame them. Obama is on a mission to appease every unfriendly nation, even at the expense of our staunchest allies. His administration has spent months condemning Israel for its settlements in order to improve chances of sitting down for talks with Iran.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he expected the Obama administration to drop the missile-defense plans. He said that Moscow wouldn’t view the move as a concession but rather a reversal of a mistaken Bush-era policy.

Still, the decision is likely to be seen in Russia as a victory for the Kremlin. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet with Mr. Obama at next week’s meetings of the U.N. General Assembly and Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.

Of course Russia sees the shield as a “mistaken” policy. Russia is helping Iran build its nuclear weapons system and wants a powerful ally in the Middle East. Not only is it a strategic victory for the Kremlin, but a propaganda victory too.

European analysts said the administration would be forced to work hard to convince both sides the decision wasn’t made to curry favor with Moscow and, instead, relied only on the program’s technical merits and analysis of Iran’s missile capabilities.

Actually, Obama’s going to have a bigger issue: Convincing the American people that he didn’t abandon their national security priorities in order to appease Moscow, which is of course exactly what he did.