Iran had not posed a “direct threat” to Europe or the United States before the attacks by the U.S. and Israel earlier this month, Poland’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski said.

In an interview published Thursday by Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, he said: “The United States and Israel naturally have their own assessment of the situation, but personally I did not notice a ‘direct threat’ to the U.S. or Europe — or even to Israel.”

He added, however, that “preventive wars can sometimes be justified,” arguing that if Nazi Germany had been fought against preventively, “the world could have been spared much suffering.”

Sikorski said Warsaw has “no such plans” to join the Iran war. “Right now we have a war on our border, an aggressive Russia with an imperial state ideology that sends drones into our airspace. We have plenty to deal with here, next door,” he said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

He added the Redzikowo military base, a U.S. missile defense complex in Poland, “is intended to detect and neutralize missiles that could threaten Europe and the United States. Iran has not launched such missiles.”

However, he said the two wars were linked, arguing Russia was backing Iran in a “Tehran-Moscow axis of evil.” “In both theaters, civilian targets are hit by the same type of weapons from the same source,” he said.

The Polish leader also used the interview to reiterate the importance of Europe taking a bigger role in its own security. “It is so because Europe, especially Western Europe, spent too long living off the peace dividend … [and] deindustrialized in the field of defense.” he said.

Bartosz Brzeziński contributed to this report.