THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973counterfactual speculation. Even if in view of the horrendous Israeli losses in October
such possibilities ought to have been explored, the record suggests that neither Cairo
nor Moscow expected or desired it.
Ismail came to the United States only after “three days of intensive consultations
in Moscow.” His Kremlin talks included another post-“expulsion” first, a “marathon”
five-hour session with Brezhnev as well as three meetings with Foreign Minister
Gromyko to “coordinate policy ahead of an expected US initiative.”^30 As an East
German official was told in Moscow, Ismail stated that an Israeli withdrawal could be
achieved only through military means. Brezhnev responded that “the Eg yptians are
their own masters and control their army. If they deem themselves ready, [they] are
welcome to consider it. We think that Eg ypt is not yet ready for it. We think that
reactionary forces in Eg ypt are trying to blame their weakness on Soviet military
technolog y.” Brezhnev pointed to the huge US losses of planes and tanks in Vietnam
to prove that the problem was not in the Soviet weapons but in their Eg yptian opera-
tors. Briefing his East German guest on the talks, Ponomarev’s deputy for developing
countries stressed that “while aspiring to a political solution, the Soviet Union is
reinforcing Eg ypt’s military potential. ... Now the Eg yptians are leaning toward the
Soviet Union again.”^31
On 18 February, Soviet chargé d’affaires Yuly Vorontsov “hand carried” to Nixon
a letter from the “Soviet leadership,” whereby “we have got an impression from our
talks with Mr Ismail that, if at this time also no progress is reached towards political
solution ... the Arabs can turn to the use of ... other methods of struggle. ... They
simply will have no other alternative.”^32 Arriving in Washington in the last week of
February, Ismail heard from Nixon himself about his post-election determination to
achieve a pax Americana, starting with a “Middle East month” to include visits by
Hussein and Meir; the Soviets were to be dealt out.^33 Kissinger, summing up two days
of talks with Ismail, determined that the latter “did not change Eg ypt’s position on
any basic issue.”^34
Kissinger was still in no hurry to press forward. He told Dobrynin, when the latter
asked “how the talks with Ismail had gone,” that “there was no possibility of a settle-
ment along the lines of the paper that Gromyko had given me during my visit last
April. ... As long as I was negotiating with the Eg yptians I saw no point in our [US–
Soviet] discussions going beyond the statement of general principles.”^35
In the US and Western media, the novelty of a ranking Eg yptian envoy at the
White House (to be followed by Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy), and even more so
Israel’s horrible blunder when on 21 February it shot down a Libyan airliner that
strayed over Sinai, overshadowed the military preparations that were the order of the
day in Moscow. The world press almost entirely ignored the arrival of Defense
Minister Ahmed Ismail in Moscow on 26 February—with the unexpected distinc-
tion of flying in on board a VIP transport of the Soviet Air Force.^36