Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War was a critical game changer in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the politics of the Middle East. Henry Kissinger famously explained the ‘intelligence failure’ of Yom Kippur thus: ‘Our definition of rationality did not take seriously the notion of starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect.’ The most recently released material suggests that Kissinger’s explanation requires some revising. This chapter demonstrates that British and American analysts understood perfectly well Sadat’s intentions, specifically his desire for a limited military victory to gain ‘face’ at home and leverage abroad. Instead analytical weakness lay in assessments of Egypt’s military capability where there was a unanimous consensus of Egypt’s impotency. Ideas about Arab ‘culture’ seem to have played a key role in this underestimation: the notion of a fatalistic Islam for example, prevailed in numerous analyses. In a radical revision of the conventional wisdom about the strengths and weaknesses of Western intelligence agencies, the Yom Kippur war provides a revealing case study whereby the West excelled in understanding the ‘mystery’ or intentions leading to war, but simply did not believe that Egypt possessed the capability to act effectively, and so perilously dismissed the prospect of an Egyptian attack.

Six-Day War

The Six-Day War currently stands as one of the CIA’s greatest ‘success’ stories in the Middle East. Good intelligence is credited with guiding policy makers in the UK and US to resist Israeli requests for military support and thereby containing a conflict that could have pitted a Western supported Israel against a Soviet backed Arab force. What made intelligence so effective in this instance? This chapter argues that analysts recognised the intentions and capabilities of the major players in this conflict. They knew that Nasser had no appetite for a war with Israel and acknowledged that he had been goaded by Syria into an aggressive rhetoric that became dangerously self-fulfilling. More importantly, analysts correctly identified that despite the numerical superiority of the combined Arab forces, the Israeli military would prevail. Yet looking beyond the catharsis of military conflict raises important questions about the utility of discourse such as ‘success’ in describing a war whose tragic legacy remains with us today.

Syrian Secession

Syria’s secession from the UAR in 1961 marked the beginning of the end of pan-Arabism. This chapter explores to what extent this dramatic development came as a surprise to the Anglo-American intelligence community, and how they reacted to it. It argues that although analysts had a good sense of the political, economic and cultural challenges of integrating the two regions, Nasser had acquired a quasi-invincible status which precluded serious consideration of secession. Despite initial misgivings about the formation of the UAR, analysts realised that this experiment with Arab unity had rendered Syria more stable than any time since independence was wrested from the French in 1949. Resorting to their cultural library of Arab stereotypes, analysts feared how the ‘undisciplined’ and ‘individualistic’ people of Syria would manage without Nasser’s moderating leadership and how the latter would respond to this unprecedented challenge to his prestige. They warned that Arab-Israeli relations would suffer and that Nasser might seek to restore his status as pan-Arab leader elsewhere.

Revolution in Iraq

In July 1958, an unknown nationalist, General Abdul Karim Qasim, came to the helm of power in Iraq. Chapter 3 reveals how analysts reacted to the brutal murder of his predecessor Nuri al Said, as Britain’s most important ally in the Middle East seemed to contract the Nasser ‘virus’ spreading through the region. Qasim quickly demonstrated that he was no Nasserist stooge however. Whilst British policymakers hoped in vain that the new Iraqi leader could be cultivated as a counterweight to Nasser, the intelligence community rapidly realised that Qasim had neither the charisma nor the popularity to compete with his Egyptian counterpart in the Arab Cold War. Qasim reliance on Iraqi Communists to counteract the influence of local Nasserites led to widespread fears that Iraq was on the brink of acquiring Soviet satellite status. This chapter brings to light for the first time the JIC’s nuanced analysis of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), suggesting to policy-makers that in fact the Soviet Union was acting as a restraining influence on the Iraqi communists. Qasim came to be increasingly depicted as ‘paranoid’ and ‘irrational’, whilst assessments of Nasser took on a new and more complimentary light as a ‘moderate’ potential ally in the quest to prevent Communist penetration of the Middle East.

Conclusion

Exploring these case studies through the secret prism of intelligence tells a dramatically different story of Anglo-American relations with the Middle East than the narratives of ‘failure’ and ‘misunderstanding’ that dominate extant accounts. Indeed for most of these seminal events, analysts had a remarkably good sense of the strategic context and provided warnings to policy makers accordingly. Predicting the tactical details of a revolution or war was considerably more difficult, particularly when these details were closely guarded or even unknown to participants themselves. This concluding chapter explores what lessons can be learned from these case studies. It highlights that assessments produced at the time often revealed an impressive degree of clarity and foresight, frequently foreshadowing the conclusions of later historical scholarship deprived of these valuable sources and writing with the benefit of hindsight. Surviving Egyptian diplomats were notably surprised by how well the analytic community read regional dynamics. ‘Culture’ was a complex and contested double-edged sword, serving as both an aid and an impediment to assessments of the Arab world.

Formation of the United Arab Republic

The formation of the United Arab Republic in February 1958 was an unprecedented demonstration of pan Arab unity. Syria’s voluntary sacrifice of its national sovereignty stoked fears that Nasser, Egypt’s ‘Hitler on the Nile’ would stop at nothing to expand his pan-Arab empire. Chapter 2 explores the intelligence community’s first encounter with the drive towards Arab unity. It reveals that analysts were initially sceptical about the prospect of any form of political unity, partly due to their perception of Syrian political culture as inherently factional and self-serving. They recognized that a fear of Communist influence in Syria was the primary motivating force behind the union. At the same time, the JIC in particular could not shed the panic of policy-makers that the move was the beginning of Nasser’s imperial expansion, potentially absorbing Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Early Years of Sadat’s Presidency

The death of President Nasser marked the end of an era in the Arab world. His successor Anwar el Sadat was an unknown quantity. Over the course of a decade, Sadat expelled the Russians from Egypt, broke the Arab-Israeli stalemate and radically reoriented Egypt’s identity towards the Western world. But what were the first impressions of this enigmatic figure? The intelligence material provides a hidden insight into Sadat that has been neglected in most Western scholarship. This chapter reveal that the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic saw Sadat as a temporary figure, an inferior statesman to his predecessor and a man of tactics rather than principles. Thus while analysts were acutely aware of the Soviet-Egyptian tensions that led to Sadat’s dramatic expulsion of 15,000 Soviet advisors in July 1972, their negative perceptions of Sadat made it difficult to recognise the strategic considerations behind the move. Not until the October 1973 War did the intelligence community appreciate that Sadat might have been clearing the way for an attack on Israel.

Introduction

This introductory chapter outlines how intelligence on the Middle East was gathered and assessed on both sides of the Atlantic and reveals the challenges posed by the legacy of the Suez Crisis. It details the book’s key research questions, sources and historiographical debates. Exploring an atmosphere of widespread hostility towards Nasser, it shows how analysts underestimated the degree to which the Suez debacle had thrust President Nasser to the unrivalled leadership of Arab nationalism. As the stability of the Arab world appeared to unravel, the stage was set for a series of dramatic confrontations between Western powers and the Egyptian president in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Aftermath of Victory

In the aftermath of the 1973 war, analysts grappled with a radically different international environment in the Arab world. The Arabs had demonstrated their ability to unite politically and economically to wage a military offensive in pursuit of a political settlement and Sadat declared a transformation in Egypt’s orientation towards the Western world. This chapter explores how the 1973 war altered perceptions of Sadat. Was the President finally able to shed his predecessor’s legacy? Drawing primarily on documents that, because of their age, have only been made available to the public in the past few years, it reveals that intelligence analysts were sceptical about the prospects for peace and the domestic implications of political and economic liberalisation. Indeed, the JIC predicted the possibility of Sadat’s assassination as early as 1975 and SIS man in Cairo, Mark Allen warned about the growing threat from the religious right. These most recent declassifications provide a plethora of revealing insights into just how the Anglo-American intelligence community regarded their newest ally in the Arab world until his dramatic assassination by affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1981.

War of Attrition

In 1968, a protracted War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel began along the Suez Canal. In March 1970 this culminated in an unprecedented Soviet military intervention to protect Egypt against Israeli deep penetration raids. This dramatic geo-political shift forced analysts to question Egypt’s commitment to peace and independence and Soviet willingness to escalate the Cold War. The literature published on this issue thus far suggests that analysts ‘failed’ to predict the Soviet intervention. This chapter reveals that contrary to our conventional understanding, British analysts warned that Arab ‘honour’ would never accept Israeli use of the east bank of the Suez Canal and that attacks on Egypt’s heartland would provoke an intervention by the Soviet Union. The documentary record makes it clear that policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic ignored or dismissed the assessments of their analysts. In the aftermath of the intervention, intelligence analysis played a key role in quelling the fears of policy makers, arguing that the Soviet Union felt obliged to react to the Israeli offensive and was not seeking to escalate the Cold War. Nor, analysts argued, could Egypt be regarded as a Soviet client state, as the expulsion of the Russian advisors only two years later would aptly demonstrate.