5
THE NUCLEAR NON-ISSUE
The other matter that calls for examination is the reduced impact of the nuclear fac-
tor on Soviet–Eg yptian considerations, at this juncture and throughout the 1967–73
period. Nasser arrived in Moscow on 4 July 1968, three days after Eg ypt was among
the thirty-six nations that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) there. Given
the centrality of Israel’s impending nuclear power for Eg yptian and Soviet motivation
to instigate the war a year earlier, the near-absence during Nasser’s ten-day stay of any
blast against Israel for not signing the NPT marked a noteworthy change—especially
since this had just been a major issue between Israel and the United States.
The two superpowers had jointly tabled the treaty on 18 January. After a lot of
informal US wrangling with Israel, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk relayed an
appeal to sign the treaty from President Johnson to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba
Eban on 28 April. Anticipating Israeli evasion, he promised “we will press every
opportunity to achieve satisfactory limitation of [conventional arms] shipments from
the Soviet Union. I can also repeat what the President said in January about our
determination to keep Israel’s needs [i.e. the Phantom fighter planes] under active and
sympathetic review.”^1 The Israelis stalled until 6 June, when Yitzhak Rabin (newly
appointed ambassador in Washington) responded that “Israel believed it would be a
mistake in present situation to make clear to Arabs that they faced no Israeli nuclear
threat. ... Problem was therefore a psychological one rather than question of whether
or not Israel should have nuclear weapons.”^2 Israel did vote for a UN General
Assembly resolution “commending” the NPT, but its formal reply—handed by Eban
to the US Embassy the day after the treaty was signed—amounted to a diplomatic
“maybe” that means “no.” Eban directly blamed Moscow for Israel’s recalcitrance: “the
U.S.S.R.—one of the proposers of the non-proliferation treaty ... is supplying them
[the Arabs], at nominal cost, with massive quantities of the most modern military
equipment ... and has in the past threatened us with missile attack.”^3
The “threat” refers to then-Premier Nikolay Bulganin’s letter to then-Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion in November 1956, which precipitated Israel’s with-
drawal from Sinai. The fact that Eban invoked no contemporary Soviet nuclear