9
WHAT TRIGGERED KAVKAZ?
REFUTING HEIKAL’S VERSIONA. How “Nasser’s secret visit to Moscow” was canonized
By mid-1969, small-scale precedents had been created for the deployment of regular
Soviet formations in Eg ypt as tripwires or even in deliberate combat assignments. But
what was to follow within a year would be such a quantum leap, up to extended
engagement with the Israelis, that by April 1970 it could no longer be ignored. At
least in hindsight, it had to be accounted for: How, when and why did it start? To
trace how an almost universally accepted narrative was created out of all-but-whole
cloth, we must fast-forward to the point where the massive, direct Soviet intervention
is conventionally held to have begun.
Nearly all histories state that this followed 7 January 1970, when the newly
acquired IAF Phantoms began a campaign of “deep-penetration bombings” in
Eg ypt’s hinterland, which the latter was powerless to counter. A desperate Nasser flew
secretly to Moscow on 22 January and threatened to resign in favor of a pro-Ameri-
can figure unless the Soviets undertook the defense of Eg ypt’s skies. The Politburo
reluctantly complied by passing a resolution to dispatch its most advanced SAM-3
missiles and MiG-21 fighters, along with the manpower to operate them until
Eg yptian personnel could be trained. On 31 January, Premier Kosygin warned the
Western powers that if Israel’s aggression were not halted, Moscow would provide the
Arabs with the means to defend themselves. But the Israeli air raids continued, and
the Soviets made good on their threat. By late March, the Soviet-manned missiles and
planes appeared in the combat zone. This direct involvement of a superpower in a
local conflict was then, by implication, the result of a gratuitous and bloody Israeli
escalation, and indirectly of the United States’ supplying the tools.
The above is often considered so axiomatic that no sources are cited. Where they
are, the trail of footnotes usually leads to a single, retrospective assertion by Nasser
himself and (mainly) to the writings of his propagandist, Mohamed Hassanein
Heikal. Nasser mentioned “my January visit” to Moscow once, in a speech six months