6 - Six-Day War

Summary

It had all the smell to me of a Guns of August kind of situation. People had blundered into a situation none of them really wanted. I don't, to this day, believe Nasser wanted a war. He wanted the fruits of victory without having to fight the war.

Roy Atherton, 1990

The Arab–Israeli War of 1967 marked a fundamental turning point in international relations. The state of Israel absorbed three times its former territory and the spectacular Arab defeat signalled the failure of pan-Arabism as an ideological force in the Middle East. The cult of Nasser as the leader of Arab nationalism would never be restored to its former glory. Scholars would later identify this ideological vacuum as the primary motivating force in the turn to Islamic fundamentalism. From the perspective of the outside powers, it signalled the ‘last moment’ of prominent British influence in the Middle East, the consolidation of Soviet influence in Egypt and the affirmation of a ‘special relationship’ between Israel and the US. Diplomatic relations between Egypt and America were instantly broken and not resumed until 1974, following false Egyptian accusations that the Israeli victory could not have been possible without American support. A junior member of the American diplomatic corps recalls the demonstrators attacking the American consulate in Alexandria. Apparently one of the more courageous consular staff went downstairs from the vault where they were hiding to try to defuse the situation. He remembers that the leader of the Egyptian mob ‘politely asked to borrow the American's cigarette lighter so he could burn the American flag which he had just taken down’.

Notwithstanding the damage done to Egyptian–American relations, the CIA portrays this crisis as a resounding intelligence success. In his memoirs, DCI Richard Helms cites it as one of the most important achievements of his career, concretely proving the worth of intelligence to a sceptical President Lyndon Johnson.