In the Middle East things were different. United States intervention there was decisive. The nature of the country, as well as of the conflict, enabled American firepower — land, sea and air — ranging far afield in reconnaissance and destruction, by sheer domination of communications to deter any serious counter-strokes by the UAR. It enabled Iran to remain free from invasion, it assisted the Arab Emirates to hold their own against somewhat half-hearted Saudi attempts to settle old scores, it facilitated the preparation in Oman of the counter-offensive forces which would sweep the Yemenis aside after one decisive battle.
Another of the most notable differences between the fighting in Southern Africa and that in the Middle East was that whereas almost all the African participants had had recent and bloody reminders of what battle was about, in Arabia the only contestants who had any experience of war with modern weapons — Egypt, Syria and Israel — were involved either very little or not at all in the fighting.
The Israelis had been continuously in a state of general alert, with reserves mobilized and the country on a war footing, since the time of the formation of the new United Arab Republic in November 1984, but they were not, in the event, surprising as it seemed to many, involved in any fighting. A Soviet guarantee of immunity from attack by her neighbours, within her frontiers as then established, in return for a guarantee on the Israeli side of complete neutrality in any developments affecting the security of the Soviet Union, was offered in December 1984. On the advice of the United States Israel accepted. From that time on, through the world crises of the following summer and the general hostilities that ensued, Israel remained neutral.
Egypt played, in the event, in spite of possessing considerable armed forces, no more than a small and ineffective part in the fighting in the Middle East. Syria played virtually none.
In the Middle East, of course, the United States was simply allying itself with powerful indigenous forces in order to protect its own interests as well as theirs. Its firm base was Iran. Iran had 2,000 tanks, most of them
The United States contribution was designed to fill the gaps. A strong Middle East naval task force was assembled mustering a total of two carriers and a dozen surface combatants. Ashore in Iran was the best part of a division of the US Marine Corps, a US airborne division and an air wing.
On the side of the Soviet Union the new United Arab Republic’s armed forces were by no means negligible in numbers. It was in their deployment and immobility that they were at a disadvantage. Egypt had a large and well-equipped army, nearly 300,000 men making up the equivalent of some twelve divisions, half of them armoured or mechanized, and ten independent brigades. Their equipment was largely Russian and included more than 2,000 tanks, with 2,500 APC and over 3,000 guns and mortars. The Egyptian Air Defence Command and the air force between them could call on 700 combat aircraft and sixty transports. The relatively small navy had a dozen submarines, eight destroyers and escorts, and fifty smaller craft. The paramilitary forces totalled 120,000.
But the Egyptian Army’s experience of operating in distant Arab countries was an unhappy one, and the bulk of their forces remained at first in the traditional deployment areas — Sinai, the Canal, the Western Desert, the Red Sea, and Southern and Central Districts. The Field Force was organized into three armies, all stationed on Egyptian soil, one east, one west, one south.
