FACING THE BAR-LEV LINE23 October and 3 November went almost unmentioned in Israel.^21 In Eg ypt, they
were hailed at the time and later canonized as a turning point in the air war, similar
to Ras el-Ish on land and the Eilat at sea. The Soviets, as usual, were not explicitly
credited but the Eg yptian “victories” were attributed to “modern tactics” as well as
accurate directions to the pilots from the radar system and control center, which were
clearly the Soviets’ work. In another incident on 10 December, Israeli interceptors
managed to shoot down only one of the slower MiG-17s–the IAF’s only kill in air
combat for all of 1968.^22
Either the tangible change in the air balance finally tipped the scales in
Washington, or—as the Israelis presented it, and recently released documents con-
firm—Johnson was already resolved to keep his promise before leaving office, and
overruled the near-unanimous objections of administration officials. On 1 November,
the Americans had requested yet another memo from Israel about “provisions” for
the Phantom sale. On the morrow of the 3 November clash, Israeli Ambassador
Rabin quoted “current Israeli intelligence appreciation of the build-up of Soviet air-
craft in Eg ypt. ... The inventories ... projected ... by 1970 had in fact already been
exceeded on November 1.”^23 Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke reluctantly
notified the Israelis that “the President agrees in principal [sic] to the sale. It is a dif-
ficult decision,” he added, and the United States would have preferred continued
Israeli reliance on European suppliers as this had “lessened the risk of US–USSR
confrontation.”
Warnke made a final try to extract a quid-pro-quo: assurances that Israel would not
“develop, manufacture, or otherwise acquire” strategic missiles or nuclear weapons,
and that it would accede to the NPT.^24 Rabin balked, and Johnson settled the issue:
“the President ... said that he had promised the F-4s without any conditions, and that
was his position.”^25 The deal was leaked to the press on the morning of Nixon’s elec-
tion victory, and formally announced on 27 December, with delivery to begin “in late
1969.”^26 All the elements for the climactic phase of the War of Attrition were now in
place—as well as a major rationale for direct Soviet intervention.
D. The Phantom deal as impetus for Kavkaz
After the EAF’s relative success on 24 October, and in marked contrast to previous
Soviet and Eg yptian warnings, the War Ministry in Cairo sneered that acquisition
of F-4s by Israel would make little difference because the EAF’s Soviet-built planes
outclassed them anyway.^27 The Soviets did not join in this braggadocio; if Heikal is
to be believed, Brezhnev admitted that “they had nothing to match the
Phantoms.”^28 The F-4 was not only the leading US model in Vietnam; for years to
come, it was considered by the USSR to present—by virtue of its range, payload
and performance—a potential threat to the Soviet Union itself, if only on a one-