THE NUCLEAR NON-ISSUEthe nuclear option except in the face of imminent existential threat to the Israeli
heartland, and the Arab and Soviet perception was adjusted accordingly.
Though this was never formally stated by Moscow, its previous recognition of
Israel only within the borders of the UN Partition Resolution of 1947 had become
inoperative. In effect, the 1967 war moved the goalposts, and the Soviets were now
committed only to restoring the “green line” of the 1949 armistice.^24 When the
USSR endorsed and supported Eg ypt’s aims of “eliminating the consequences of
Israeli and imperialist aggression,” this was limited to regaining Sinai, and Moscow
sought to reassure Israel that this was its genuine as well as declared position. By
February 1968, the CIA reported: “the Soviets made it very clear that Israel is here to
stay and they will not ... facilitate its destruction.”^25 Among other instances,
Primakov—in Israel in August 1971 for secret talks on behalf of the Politburo—con-
gratulated the Israeli leadership on its major achievement in the Six-Day War: univer-
sal recognition of the 1949 lines as the country’s definitive borders.^26 Eg ypt, he
asserted, no longer sought Israel’s eradication, and—as he claimed, under Soviet
influence—now recognized its existence.^27 The risk of triggering an Israeli doomsday
scenario therefore seemed improbable enough to be canceled out by the deterrent
value of the Soviet nuclear guarantee to Eg ypt—of which the Israelis were given
periodic reminders. As IDF analysts noted, in theory Soviet doctrine held that “so
long as the adversary ... has not been deprived of the capability to produce nuclear
weapons and the means for their delivery ... the enemy will be able to resist and cause
casualties.”^28 But Soviet and Eg yptian planning for their limited objective against
Israel could disregard the issue.^29
The NPT signing ceremonies, in Washington and London as well as Moscow, were
overshadowed by the increasing tension over the “Prague Spring.”^30 Even less interest
was aroused by a Soviet government statement issued over the signature of Kosygin,
the only member of the leadership troika who attended the Moscow event.^31 It
recycled his 1966 proposal for denuclearization of the Mediterranean region. But
Israeli commentators—among the few in the international media who bothered to
analyze this text—saw more immediate significance in its call for “slackening of the
[conventional] arms race in the Middle East ... only on condition of ... the full evacu-
ation of Israeli forces.”^32
The Israelis considered that Kosygin’s statement was intended to exclude the
Middle East from any global conventional-disarmament process, in order to reassure
Nasser that there would be no such regional accord with the United States before an
Israeli withdrawal.^33 The operative significance was, then, an implied commitment
“that if the USSR’s conditions for Israeli withdrawal are not fulfilled, there will be no
limit to Soviet weapons supply for the Arabs, while at least for the time being there
is no parallel armament of Israel” by the United States.^34
Moshe Dayan’s recently declassified testimony before the Agranat Commission
included a still heavily censored passage in which the defense minister listed the types