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Sadat's war

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
    Ambition might be sky high but without the capabilities, no top leader is going to take as monumental a risk as this without some thing. The element of surprise helps at the beginning but it takes much more to sustain the momentum. Does he really believe he can outdo the Israelis at their own game.
    You're putting way too much credit in Sadat. His army 4 times more prepared than the last war Egypt fought and he has a 2 front war with Syria in the north. Military expertise is not something the Arabs can boast about and notice that the Israelis have been mighty silent about being the best military on earth after the Kuwait War.

    Bottom line: Sadat had the confidence in the military objectives when he started the war.
    Last edited by Officer of Engineers; 27 Jun 16,, 19:36.
    Chimo

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
      How to explain starting the war then. He's got people ready & willing. he knows his odds are not that great.
      A limited war to strengthen his position in whatever ways possible.

      war is means to achieve political ends...so a strong military position first in a limited campaign and then a combination of external/internal pressure on Israel to return remaining occupied
      lands for peace.

      US is play a major role as a chief ally of Israel ofcourse but not the sole criterion.

      they basically wanted Sinai back..

      The best military position would be one or the two of the strategic passes giddy and mitla in Egyptian hands and the Golan plateau in syrain hands and after establishing a defensive line within Sinai, they would hang on till ceasefire is enforced. Then the superpowers and internal politics were supposed to come in suggesting return of lands for peace.

      That he can declare 'victory' with some good battlefield performnaces and losses inflicted on Israel were other benefits.(albeit replenished by US help over 22000 tons)


      What gave him the confidence to start that war.
      Honest appraisal of the 1967 war,effective corrective actions, change in command, intense training and unexpectedly successful deception.

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      • #18
        Little update to this thread. The Israelis had a mole inside the Egyptian administration. The man is Ashraf Marwan. He was Gamal Abdul Nasser's s-i-l. After Nasser passes away and his Vice Sadat takes over. Ashraf becomes Sadat's personal secretary. There was a netflix movie called the Angel.

        Idea was to weaken Israel not destroy Israel. Sadat wanted the lost territory back.

        Here is a review of the book the movie was based upon.

        The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel | CSI | Volume 60, No. 4 (December 2016 (pdf)

        Bar-Joseph spends much of the book addressing whether “the Angel” was genuine. After all, Ashraf Marwan (a.k.a. “the Angel”) was the son-in-law of Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and a close adviser to President Sadat. Marwan started in 1970 as a “walk-in,” offering Egypt’s order-of-battle to Mossad officers in London. A skeptic could not be blamed for thinking there was something too good to be true about Marwan, but the author makes a good case that sometimes intelligence services get lucky.

        Most persuasively, Bar-Joseph argues the nature of the intelligence Marwan gave the Israelis was simply too destructive of Egyptian interests. From the start, the Angel gave Israel not “seed corn”—intelligence that was true but of marginal consequence—but highly damaging, order-of-battle information. As the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War would eventually show, Marwan provided accurate intelligence about how the Egyptian military would conduct itself and the signs to watch for in its battle preparations a year before the attack, giving Israel plenty of time to ready its defenses.

        Divisions in the intelligence ranks contributed to Israel’s being less prepared to halt a Sinai crossing than a Syrian takeover of the Golan Heights. After Prime Minister Meir gave mobilization orders, having received Marwan’s convincing intelligence about an imminent attack, the director of military intelligence told the military commander in the Sinai that he still didn’t believe Sadat would fight a limited war. As a result, this commander did not take the orders seriously; however, his counterpart in the north did—and took action. This saved Israel from having to begin a major and bloody campaign to retake the Golan Heights, and freed up forces to counterattack in the Sinai desert, where Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and made major inroads into the Sinai Peninsula.

        The Yom Kippur War came as a surprise to the US Intelligence Community, where analysts shared the consensus Israeli Military Intelligence view that a major Egyptian attack was unlikely in 1973. However, US analysts did at least entertain the possibility that Sadat had adopted the more limited war aims about which Marwan had warned the Israelis.

        Like their Israeli counterparts, US analysts as late as October could not shake the compelling logic of Egypt’s only fighting a winnable war, which they were in no position to launch.
        Last edited by Double Edge; 02 Jan 22,, 23:41.

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