THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973Cairo and/or Damascus for the flash to be visible there at night. The idea was received
“uncomfortably” by Atomic Energ y Commission head Freier, totally rejected by Meir
and other ministers, and never implemented.^4
Hersh’s widely accepted version puts this discussion a day later, when the situation
on the Eg yptian front was at its bleakest following a failed Israeli counterattack. One
of the present authors (Remez) was told by a staff officer in the Southern Command
forward headquarters late in the night of 8–9 October that “we have only 50 tanks
left between the Eg yptian Army and Tel Aviv.” Cohen dates Hersh’s account, which
he rejects, more plausibly to the following morning when Dayan was at his most
despondent. Hersh holds that an Israeli nuclear strike was indeed readied—besides
aircraft, by ground-based missiles, whose silo covers were opened and detected by
both US and Soviet satellites, as well as Soviet “operatives” in Israel.^5
The versions that either Meir rejected Dayan’s idea or that she did brandish the
nuclear option in what Hersh calls “nuclear blackmail” to accelerate vital US resupply
have been described as mutually exclusive.^6 But that is not necessarily the case. Such
signals as opening silos might have been made without the missiles actually being
armed. The impression that a nuclear option was under consideration, or even being
readied, could have been transmitted to Kissinger (who could be trusted to tell the
Soviets), or intentionally conveyed by the Israelis to Moscow, or gathered by Soviet
informants in Israel. The latter is precisely the interpretation proposed in 2001 by a
senior Russian defense analyst.^7 It may explain the orders issued to Soviet submarines
at the start of the war to prepare a nuclear counterstrike.
Leonid Tikochinsky, then a rare if not singular Jewish officer on a Soviet nuclear
submarine, related that his boat had been patrolling the Mediterranean since 1972,
“including Israeli waters, well aware that we might be taking decisive action against
that country.” After the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, he was instructed by the
fleet admiral: “when you receive the order you are to fire missiles at Israel.” As in the
Six-Day War, it was specified that this would be only as a second strike, but now it
was assumed that Israel had both weapons and delivery systems. “The order would be
given only if Israel dared employ its nuclear weapons at Arab states. The Soviet sub-
marines were to deter Israel from firing its nuclear missiles.” Tikochinsky noted that
the usual procedure was to give captains only geographic coordinates of their land
targets; this time, he was explicitly assigned Israeli objectives, and in hindsight sus-
pected that this was done intentionally to test his loyalty.^8
Shortly afterward, on 11 October, “Special Air Detachment 154” was alerted for
deployment to Eg ypt. This formation consisted of four MiG-25s, this time all of the
reconnaissance bomber (RB) variant, with seven pilots, ground crews and support
staff totaling over 220 men. Beginning on 13 October, twelve An-22 and seventy-two
An-12 sorties were needed to fly the outfit to Cairo-West. The men were stripped not
only of documents and insignia, but of any item identifiable as Soviet, from wrist-
watches to matches. The planes’ Soviet military markings were painted over. But