12
OPERATION KAVKAZ IS FORMALLY ORGANIZED
A. Nasser offers—again—to join the Warsaw Pact
The new Russian versions, even together with the back-channel reports, fall just short
of absolute proof that Heikal invented “Nasser’s secret visit to Moscow in January”
ex nihilo. Such a conclusion would be seductive, as in view of the way this story was
propagated, it would stand as a rare masterpiece of disinformation. But it cannot be
utterly refuted unless a clear sighting emerges of Nasser elsewhere than Moscow on
22–6 January, and so far none has. Heikal just might be conflating several visits, or
misdating Nasser’s crucial talks or correspondence with Brezhnev over several
months. But the genesis of Kavkaz in January 1970, as a response to Israel’s new
offensive strateg y, can now definitely be discarded.
It is likewise intriguing though still inconclusive that the Russian military historian
who disputes Heikal’s January date for Nasser’s visit also describes the content of the
Eg yptian president’s message as the opposite of Heikal’s version. Western accounts
have hitherto echoed the latter’s claim that Nasser threatened “to resign and hand
over power to someone who would seek a settlement through the Americans, unless
he received immediate effective help against the Israeli air attacks.”^1 But according to
Yaremenko, not only did Nasser make no such threat; on the contrary, he—who had
suppressed communism at home—once again “stressed insistently that if his sugges-
tion ‘might embarrass the Russians,’ Eg ypt was prepared to join the Warsaw Pact ‘even
tomorrow’” in order to secure the deployment of integral Soviet formations.^2
In a 1998 lecture, Yaremenko noted that until then his team had found no official
documentation of the Kremlin’s response.^3 Senior Soviet officials of the period
replied vaguely when asked about what must have been a momentous decision: to
reject a proposal for formal extension of the Warsaw Pact outside Europe. “I heard
about it but never saw any document on the subject. I think it’s apocryphal but I can’t
rule it out,” said Karen Brutents, who was at the time an adviser to the International
Department of the CPSU Central Committee.^4 “Those are rumors,” Dobrynin told
the present writers. “I don’t know whether they’re true or not. Such information did
not reach Washington. I read something in the papers, but I can’t say yes or no.”^5