The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973. The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict

THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973

B. The United States blames Israel

Though Masregah’s David has claimed his intercepts showed the Americans that
Israel was their strategic asset, at the time the Israelis were blamed for this sea-change
in the global balance of the Cold War. They were unable to refute the already wide-
spread account that Nasser’s flight to Moscow, his desperate appeal for help against
Israeli aggression, and the resulting Soviet intervention had been caused by the depth
bombings. The Israelis had to sidestep the question with ambiguous formulations
that acknowledged a visit to Moscow by Nasser in January, but still contended that
the Soviet deployment had begun previously.^12 The latter claim has now been vindi-
cated, but at the time it came too late for Israel’s advocacy purposes and would not
stick. “Whatever the truth of the Eg yptian–Soviet arms negotiations,” insider
William Quandt wrote a few years after the events, “few officials in Washington were
prepared to accept the Israeli version.” They “thought that Israel had brought on the
Soviet response by a reckless bombing campaign and irresponsible rhetoric aimed at
the Nasser regime’s existence.”^13
By January 1971, a report by no less than the chief of the Soviet Division at the
CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis stated as established fact that Nasser
“made an emergency visit to the Soviet Union in the third week of January [1970] to
demand help [and] the Soviet leadership consented.” The report conceded the minor
point that “this decision was not prompted but was reinforced by news received by
the Soviet leadership soon after Nasir’s visit that important Soviet advisers in Eg ypt
had been killed and wounded.” But it dismissed any claim that the Soviet deployment
was initiated earlier:

Some Israelis—sensitive to the implication that their deep-penetration raids had proven

unwise—have since argued that the Soviet intervention ... had been planned for months

before those raids began. This argument is not credible in view of the evidence suggesting

that the Soviet Ministry of Defense and the Soviet leadership were galvanized to action

and to decision-making during and shortly after Nasir’s visit.^14

Eventually, the Americans relented from Nixon’s declared freeze of aircraft supply,
but only to the extent of restoring Israeli losses when the Soviet SAMs began taking
a heavy toll, and that too with no publicity.^15
At the end of April, even the sympathetic US ambassador in Israel, Walworth
Barbour, in a talk with Israeli Foreign Minister Eban, still “repeated the US position
about the IAF bombings deep in Eg ypt, which in the US opinion had caused the
Soviet deployment of the SAM-3s.” When Eban told Barbour that Israel intended to
publicize the Soviet intervention, and appealed for a “forceful and clear American
response,” the ambassador coolly “thought aloud that there might be some advantage
in keeping the presence of Soviet pilots secret, so as not to engage their prestige.”^16
Against his advice, on 29 April Israel went ahead with a highly unusual cabinet dec-