After the phone call Dorothy and I had an early dinner on the plane and I asked the attendant to make up the big VIP bed in the rear section. We need to try to get some sleep so we’ll have a good start on fighting the inevitable jet lag. The plane is luxurious. It’s the first time I’ve ever been on one of the fancy new White House planes that can function as both a hotel and office.
We’re using one of the big White House jets because someone at the White House decided we need “to make an impression” even though my trip is supposed to be private and unofficial.
"Making an impression" is White House-speak for trying to look like we’re doing something when we’re not. It’s right up there in significance with politicians and diplomats letting photographers take pictures for the media prior to a meaningless meeting. I didn’t argue. Dorothy likes the plane. So do I, for that matter.
In many ways the plane is sort of like a big airborne hotel. I got back out of bed and locked the door to the bedroom suite, and hung the “do not disturb” sign on it, when Dorothy sort of giggled as she climbed into bed and asked me if it is true there is something called the Mile High Club.
If there wasn’t before, there will be soon.
******
While we waited at the Tel Aviv airport VIP room for the Prime Minister on Tuesday afternoon, Dick Evans and Mister Duffy walked in to report what they’d learned during their extended stay with Yoram’s Tenth Brigade. They’d driven down from the Golan at my request so we could talk without using the satellite phone system and risk being overheard. We talked as we walked along the upstairs hallway corridor and looked down at the people on the airport’s crowded main floor.
Man, there are a lot of people in here. There may be another war brewing but you sure wouldn’t know it from all the tourists coming in to Israel.
Both Evans and Duffy were enthusiastic about Yoram’s Brigade. According to them the Tenth has modern weapons and is fully trained up and ready for combat. Its reservists are almost all combat veterans of at least one war; and they’re all in place because the brigade has been undergoing its annual training. Most of its reservists, the bulk of its strength, are scheduled to return to civilian life at the end of the week. But there are rumors they will be held on active duty until the intentions of the rapidly approaching New Islamic Army, as it is now being called by the media, become clearer.
It may be, suggested Dick, the rest of the Israeli brigades are not as ready to fight as the Tenth, but only because their reserves have not yet been called up. Almost certainly in similarly good shape is a reserve brigade in the Sinai now also undergoing its annual training. And Dick thinks two other Israeli brigades are possibly even more ready than the Tenth—the Seventh Brigade, the Golanis, which is permanently on active duty on the Golan Heights and always kept at full strength and the 188th Armor. The 188th is also a full time regular brigade based on the Golan and it too is always kept at full strength.
So far only a few of the army’s specialists and about half of the air force reservists have been called up. The rest of the Israeli reservists apparently won’t leave their peacetime jobs and report for duty until the war is about to start. According to the officers Dick and Harry spoke with, and the latest CIA analysis, Israel’s economy is too small to allow hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens to be away from their jobs and families while they wait to see if there is going to be another war. Besides, Israel is so small they can get to their mobilization points in a matter of hours.
Well, that makes sense.
“General, there seems to be no doubt in the minds of everyone we spoke with at the Tenth, both from its core complement of regulars and its reservists, about Israel’s army quickly reaching full strength. And almost every one of them made much of Israel being so small it doesn’t take long for its reservists to reach their units. In essence, General, Israel is ready for war if the Islamic Coalition attacks because it’s always ready.”
“Okay. Good brief. Thank you. Now I wanted you and Harry to go back up to the Golan and keep me posted on how the Tenth is doing and what you hear about the other Israeli units.”
Being on the scene to see the readiness of the troops on the ground and what they are actually doing and thinking is the best way I know to understand how ready an army is to go to war.
“Call me two or three times a day with a situation report if you can get access to secure communications. If you can’t get access, you can take turns driving into Tel Aviv every day or so and send in your situation report from the embassy.”
Chapter Ten
My meeting at the airport commenced as soon as the Prime Minister walked in the door with his substantial security entourage and a number of aides. He chatted with Dorothy for a moment and seemed surprisingly relaxed and upbeat when he thanked me for helping to arrange the airlift that will be bringing in the additional armor and supplies the Israelis have requested.
Overall our meeting was not the somber affair I anticipated; there was a lot less anxiety on the Israeli side than I expected, at least not about the ultimate outcome. The Prime Minister was much more concerned about the casualties Israel will take if there is a war and the damage to the economy from calling up their reserves, but he’s confident they’ll win. Maybe overconfident?
In any event, the Prime Minister told me, Israel has finished calling up the limited number of reservists it intends to call until the shooting is actually about to start. Even so, the Prime Minister admits, everyone is, “as you might expect,” quiet and apprehensive.
Well that’s no surprise and it certainly confirms all the intelligence reports I’ve been reading.
On a lighter note, according to the local English language newspaper Dick showed me before he and Harry left to go back to the Tenth, the media representatives pouring into Israel’s scorching summer heat to report on the possible war have been consumed with trying to decide whether to report on it wearing khaki pants and shirts or with a military look wearing armor vests and helmets.
It seems that some of the attractive young ladies the American media have brought in to report on the war as “war correspondents” want to avoid wearing helmets because it will mess up their hair. According to the story, one of them apparently sent an “urgent dispatch from the front” requesting two more hair stylists and another makeup artist.
******
Dorothy and I flew across the border and into Egypt late Tuesday afternoon as soon as my airport meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister ended. I’m on an unofficial and unannounced visit and the only people there to greet us at the airport were the US ambassador and his wife and a proper Egyptian major general representing the Egyptian President. After exchanging the customary meaningless introductions and pleasantries, Dorothy and I drove to the embassy with Ambassador and Mrs. Tolson.
Driving to the embassy with the Tolsons was a real eye opener. Egypt truly is another world. The streets and sidewalks were absolutely packed with people and bumper to bumper with every sort of conveyance from push carts and bicycles to trucks belching black smoke and old buses so packed people are hanging on the sides and riding on the roof.
Our plan is to stay in the embassy’s guest suite this evening and do a little sight-seeing and shopping Wednesday morning in the narrow and winding streets and passageways of Cairo’s old Khan el-Khalili bazaar. I’ll meet with General Hegazi and the Egyptians Wednesday afternoon. I wonder if the Egyptian President will be there. I certainly hope so. I’d like to get his take on the situation.
Chapter Eleven
A long line of dimmed headlights approaching the border on the road from Damascus caught the eye of the Israeli patrol driving along the separation fence long before they heard the rumble of the approaching columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers. The approaching column was moving south towards Israel in the moonlight on both sides of the road.
One of the Golani Brigade’s night duty officers, a lieutenant, responded to the patrol’s first radio transmissi
on at 0209 by telling the patrol leader to stay on the air and immediately report any changes. He responded to their second report a couple of minutes later by sounding the alarm.
It was 0213 when the alert sirens sounded and the hastily awakened men and women of Israel’s elite Seventh Armored Brigade, the Golanis, began manning their tanks and Marders, the German-made Infantry Fighting Vehicles used by the Seventh. The duty lieutenant did what he was supposed to do after sounding the alarm—he immediately sent a warning notice to IDF headquarters.
A few minutes later, about 0219, other patrols and observation posts began reporting two additional armored columns approaching the barbed wire separation barrier that marks the beginning of the Golan Heights territory controlled by Israel.
“Maybe they’ll stop,” was the unspoken thought of almost every member of the hastily awakened brigade from private to brigadier. It was not to be.
At 0232 the first Islamic Coalition tank, a relatively new Iranian Chieftain II sold by the United Kingdom to the Tehran government less than three months earlier, crashed through the coils of razor wire separating the Israeli forces on the Golan from the Syrians. The sky promptly lit up with numerous flares fired by both the attacking Iranians and the defending Golanis.
The Golanis have prepared positions and they’ve been carefully located to cover the many potential avenues an attack might take. But the Golanis were spread out in an extended front stretching for many kilometers all along the separation barrier. More than half of the brigade’s armor and anti-tank weapons were not within shooting distance of the initial enemy columns when they began crossing the barrier.
In two cases the attacking Islamic columns ran head on into a single company of Israeli Merkava tanks and personnel carriers; in the third, they ran into an entire battalion. But the Israelis were hull down and ready to fight on territory they know; whereas the Iranians and Syrians are out in the open on unfamiliar ground. The initial result is a virtual slaughter, highly favorable to Israel, as one after another Iranian and Syrian Chieftains and their M-113 armored personnel carriers were hit and destroyed.
The Israeli turkey shoot continued for about five minutes until the last of the heavily outnumbered Israeli tanks and APCs were either destroyed by the huge mass of Iranian and Syrian armor or forced to fall back to the brigade’s next line of prepared positions. About a third of the Israeli tanks and APCs didn’t make it to their fallback positions—and many of those that did were carrying casualties and already running short on ammunition.
A terrible price had been paid by the Islamic Coalition armies—but Islamic armor and troops were on the Golan Heights for the first time in many years.
****** General Christopher Roberts
Everything changed for me a little before three in the morning. Dorothy and I were sound asleep in the embassy guest suite when there was a tremendous pounding on the door.
“General. Wake up. You must wake up immediately.”
I jerked awake so suddenly I knocked over the glass of Diet Seven Up I always keep next to the phone in case I wake up thirsty in the middle of the night.
“What’s up?” I shouted in the darkness while I tried to find a light switch by the bed.
“General, the Ambassador wants you to know the embassy just received a flash message for you from the duty officer in your Washington office. The National Security Agency reports it has picked up Israeli Army radio transmissions suggesting large numbers of Iraqi, Syrian, and Iranian troops and armor are crossing into Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. It says there are reports of heavy fighting and Israel has called up all its reserves.”
My God; how the hell did the CIA and NSA miss that?
I pulled on my pants and shoes and hurriedly follow the anxious marine corporal to the embassy’s communications center. It was being rapidly manned with disheveled and partially dressed staff beginning to rush in just as I was.
As I entered and began reading the messages and reports pouring in for me I could see and hear the ambassador in the adjacent secure room with its door open. He was in his pajamas and giving orders to a Marine gunnery sergeant to go to maximum alert for a possible attack on the embassy—and only allow American citizens and embassy employees to enter the embassy grounds.
When I looked at the satellite photos and scanned the initial reports a few minutes later I suddenly realized the formation of the Islamic Army and the planning for its attack must have been going on for some time—while the fighting was still raging between the Shiites and Sunnis and the various governments and militias.
Damn. That’s hard to believe.
First things first. I called the office as I leafed through the flash message and asked to be patched through to Peter. He answered immediately. I could hear the noise of some kind of dinner party going on in the background.
“Yes General, I received a call from the duty officer several minutes ago. I was waiting to hear from you. If you hadn’t called in the next couple of minutes I was going to call Marty Anderson and ask him if he or I should inform the President.”
“Peter, I’m in Cairo as you know. How do you suggest I proceed?”
“It’s evening here, General, and the President’s undoubtedly still up. He probably just finished some kind of informal social function with the Israeli prime minister who came in today on his way to the U.N. Security Council meeting scheduled for tomorrow. I think you should call the President immediately and let him know the Islamic Army is pouring across the Syrian and Iraqi borders into Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. The President should be advised to call the Israeli prime minister immediately and let him know we are aware of the situation and ready to help. It’s too early to be certain but it sure looks like the start of a major war.”
“You’re right. I’ll do it immediately. Thank you for the advice. Standby there or, better yet, head over to the Situation Room. I’ll be back to you shortly.”
Less than two minutes later one of the communications men gave a loud shout and I was connected to the President.
“Sir, this is Chris Roberts calling from Cairo. In case you have not already been informed, at approximately 0220 this morning local time the Islamic Army launched a major attack on Israel using conventional arms. I was in Israel a few hours ago and I am at our Cairo embassy at the moment. The only thing I can tell you for sure is it looks like the start of a major war and the Israelis seem to have been caught by surprise.”
“No sir. At this time I do not believe there is anything you can do until the situation becomes clearer—except call the Prime Minister and assure him we’ll be there for Israel in whatever way they need us. I’ll try to have a complete report and some recommendations for you no later than at the National Security Council meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
Later, while sitting with Ambassador Tolson and reading the reports and updates flowing in, I wondered out loud how long young Iranians, Syrians, and Iraqis have been dying by the thousands every day in order to provide cover for the extensive negotiations and planning required for such a carefully planned surprise attack.
It wasn’t until I said it out loud that I finally understood how really big and serious this war was likely to become.
****** The Professor in Somalia
I was sleeping on my little fold up cot in the big hangar when they shook me awake in the dead of the night.
“Please get up, Professor. There is important news. We have been listening to Al Jazeera Radio and it reports the Islamic Army has crossed the Israeli, Lebanese, and Jordanian borders in force. What should we do?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I muttered as I pushed off the dirty sheet protecting me from the wind coming from the big fan. “We do absolutely nothing until we get orders as to what we are to do.”
After I stood up and ran my fingers through what’s left of my hair and thought for a bit, I expanded my order. “On second thought, you’d better increase the guard and push out the perimeter a little. Now’s the time they’ll hit us if
they know we’re here.”
Then, without even waiting to get dressed or put on my shoes, I hurried to the communications van in my shorts to call in for instructions. The men who had been sleeping all around me were beginning to wake up and grab their weapons as I trotted past them.
****** General Christopher Roberts
Dorothy was back in bed but I couldn’t sleep. After a while I put my pants on and walked into the now-deserted little coffee room of the embassy’s communications center and sat down to read the latest reports and think. I was trying to understand what was happening and think through what we could do and should do—and it wasn’t working. I’m missing something and I don’t know what it is.
Israel’s high command and its intelligence agencies have been closely monitoring the new Islamic Coalition and its forces since even before the Coalition was simultaneously announced by their respective media. It seems the United States and everyone else, including the Israeli government and its intelligence agencies, did not believe the coalition agreement was actually in effect because the fighting continued so ferociously in Iraq and Syria and Yemen.
Acting as if you are still at war and letting many tens of thousands of your people be killed and wounded while you are actually working together is the ultimate deception and it worked. It sure fooled me and our intelligence agencies.
And it really did work. Israel and everyone else, and certainly including me, assumed it would take quite some time for the various former enemies to disengage and integrate their forces, plan their combined attack on Israel, and put their plans into effect.
Everyone was fooled. I certainly was. I just could not believe the Iranians, Syrians, and Iraqis, and all those militias, could reach a peace agreement without anyone knowing about it and then, while they were still viciously at war killing each other, work together to plan a unified attack on Israel. What was really impressive was the way they stopped their war and quickly moved their armies to the borders of Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan, and sent them straight into battle without a pause.
Israel's Next War Page 11
