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

THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973

Mideast; they’ll screw it up. But I just can’t see Henry doing it. ... Right after the election

... I said, “Henry, the time has now come ... to squeeze the old woman.”^18

But within a week, the first convictions in the Watergate affair were handed down,
Nixon’s standing deteriorated rapidly, and no move was made to dislodge Kissinger
or to alter his approach. On the contrary, his grip intensified until he achieved an
unprecedented monopoly by retaining his position as national security adviser when
he replaced Rogers as secretary of state on 22 September 1973. The State Department
could not be blamed when two weeks later, Kissinger’s policy at least failed to prevent
the Yom Kippur War.
While the war was in progress, Kissinger and his Vietnamese opposite number
were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Paris accords. Le Duc Tho declined the
prize, as the pact had not yet been implemented, and it never was. A quarter-century
later, a reassessment published by the Norwegian Nobel Institute concluded that in
the Middle East no less than in Vietnam, “the Soviet–American summits of 1973–74
increasingly represented a public façade; underneath that façade the search for uni-
lateral advantages continued. ... All said, the ‘performance’ hardly merited a prize.”^19
For now, in early 1973, the US embassy in Israel confirmed that “today, with what
Israelis consider to be [the] de-Sovietization in large degree of [the] Middle East
conflict and U.S.–Soviet rapprochement, they think that U.S. fears of global confron-
tation no longer will lead to U.S. pressure.”^20 Hopes of a radical pro-American shift
in Cairo were raised by feelers toward Washington from Sadat’s envoy Hafez Ismail,
but dampened by continuing signs of a Soviet–Eg yptian reconciliation. The CIA saw
a silver lining in terms of renewed Soviet pressure for a settlement:

the meeting in Cairo on 25 January between President Sadat and the Soviet Ambassador ...

who had just returned from consultations in Moscow ... was their first meeting in six months.

... In his 1 February 1973 message, Hafiz Ismail ... noted that the present state of Eg yptian–

Soviet relations is more favorable than that of Eg yptian relations with the US. ... Moscow

may be preparing for or even stimulating a revival of interest in a Middle Eastern settlement,

now that a Vietnam peace agreement has been signed. The Soviets ... could have made this

point so strongly to Sadat that he now feels more restricted and inhibited.

This reading of a Soviet–Eg yptian rapprochement as aimed mainly at promoting
a Soviet-backed peace initiative was unchanged even in an updated postscript:
“Vinogradov received a Soviet military delegation from Moscow ... on 1 February
1973”—that is, the delegation’s dispatch had been coordinated before he returned to
Cairo.^21 It spent at least twelve days in Eg ypt.

C. Lashchenko returns to coordinate offensive plans and armament

This military mission was described as “relatively low-level ... discussing routine main-
tenance and spare-parts supply.” But it was received by both Ahmed Ismail and Sadat