THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973remained (or arrived with newly stationed advisers) for their evacuation in October
1973 to require a massive sea- and airlift. The interpreter Vakhtin, who was then in a
group reposted urgently to Eg ypt, found the advisers’ quarters in Nasser City to be
just as when he left in July 1972; even the same Eg yptian mess hall attendants were
on duty, which bespoke unbroken operation.^45
D. “The biggest canard”: denial of offensive aircraft
The extent and success of the Soviet–Eg yptian deception was particularly pro-
nounced in respect of Soviet arms shipments. As Rubinstein termed it not long after
the “expulsion,” “the biggest canard in all Western reporting on the affair was the
prevailing uncritical acceptance ... of Sadat’s claim” that supplies had been slashed.
“Excluding nuclear weapons, of course, no other weapons in the Soviet arsenal were
denied the Eg yptians.”^46 Stein, writing twenty-two years later, also pointed out the
“virtually uninterrupted military supply flow from Moscow,” which “lends support
to the notion that Brezhnev wanted to repatriate Soviet advisers and ... sustain some
leverage over Cairo.”^47 And thirty years after the event, a Russian diplomat in Israel
confirmed: “Sadat’s rift with the Soviet Union was more of a theatrical gesture than
a serious policy turnaround: the flow of Soviet arms and military equipment to Eg ypt
never stopped.”^48
Several hours before Sadat’s announcement, the CIA reported it had learned that
he “has ordered a sharp reduction in the Soviet military presence ... apparently as a
demonstration of Eg ypt’s independence of great power influence.” But the agency
listed this development beneath an illustrated report that in late May—that is, after
the summit—“Cairo has received a second shipment of T-62 tanks ... indicating
Moscow’s willingness to meet some of President Sadat’s request,” noting that this
shipment of “advanced” tanks was “the first delivered outside the Warsaw Pact.”^49 By
1984, a US military study resorted to prepositional harmonization: “Despite the
ejection of the majority of the Russian advisors in June of 1972, the Soviet Union not
only maintained, but increased the flow of military equipment to Eg ypt. Clearly, the
1973 war would not have been fought without this support.”^50
After the war, Heikal confirmed that there had been no substantial hiatus in Soviet
weapons supplies to Eg ypt, and in fact some additional and distinctly offensive sys-
tems were provided after the alleged rift. Tawila even dates the effort to spread reports
about “deficiencies” of Soviet weapons “at the very time when the two parties—Eg ypt
and the USSR—had reached agreement about the supply of quantities of arms during
the second half of 1973—weapons which in fact, were beginning to arrive.” The
informants deployed to spread the bluff, “speaking in the jargon of the scientist and
the expert, ... would say that the Soviets ... were even cutting off the supply of spare
parts in such a manner that our planes had turned into useless scrap.”^51