THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973which Assad preferred October over the earliest option, in May.^46 According to
Syrian military documents recently published in Russia, the decision to launch a joint
attack on Israel was reached by Sadat and Assad on 25 February, at an otherwise
unreported meeting in Alexandria, to which Assad brought preliminary plans that
his generals had submitted two weeks earlier. Ahmed Ismail—as commander of the
Eg yptian–Syrian–Libyan federation’s united forces—was informed; that is, he
arrived in Moscow with the joint decision already made.^47 This would put the deter-
mination of date and the finalization of arms supply as the main items that he
arranged in Moscow and relayed back to the Syrians, who were already “elaborating
the details” of the operational plan.
The Syrian documents state that this plan was completed on 31 March, but the
General Staff in Damascus decided on 18–19 April to postpone implementation “to
the autumn, in order to improve preparation and complete induction of equipment
newly arrived from the USSR.”^48 Accordingly, as the US embassy in Rabat reported,
although a delegation from Morocco visited Syria on 19–20 March to arrange the
dispatch of troops, no date was set; they ultimately would be sent in August.^49
Bar-Joseph’s The Angel cites an earlier version whereby the Alexandria summit was
on 23 April and Assad then went again to Moscow for more aircraft and air defense
systems, returning to Damascus with Soviet Air Force chief Kutakhov.^50 Bar-Joseph’s
purpose was to show that a warning by Ashraf Marwan on 11 April, whereby a war
was to be launched in May, was genuine, as the postponement to the fall had not yet
been agreed. But the evidence now indicates that the Soviets clearly knew by the end
of April that the offensive was not going to be launched that spring, which casts new
light on the accepted view that it was postponed after preparations on the ground
were already begun and detected.
Brezhnev did not mention any arms deal when, on 14 March, he wrote to Nixon
that Ahmed Ismail “had expressed the Eg yptian Government’s serious concern with
the absence of any progress toward a peace settlement. ... The Eg yptian Government
was coming to the conclusion that military confrontation with Israel might become
unavoidable. Therefore, Eg ypt had to prepare itself.” Again, “Brezhnev concluded his
message by saying that he wanted to draw the President’s attention to the necessity of
taking constructive steps in order to prevent such a confrontation.”^51 Testifying
before the Israeli commission of inquiry after the Yom Kippur War, Foreign Minister
Eban effectively blamed the Americans for taking such statements at face value and
pushing the Israelis in the same direction:
since we were cut off from [the USSR] due to the Six-Day War, I must say that the general
opinion in our quarters was undoubtedly influenced by those who had more contacts
there. It was that because of Détente ... the Soviet Union would identify 100% with the
Arabs, arm them subject to certain limitations, [but] wouldn’t give them any weapons of
which the very receipt would tempt them toward war ... [as] it did not desire a war. This
was first and foremost an American chorus ... We helped to convene some seminars of