By the first days of July 1971, less than two months  after my assignment as Chief of Staff, I was in a position to put my plans for a limited operation to the then Minister of War and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, General Muhammad Ahmad Sadiq. he flatly rejected them.

The operation, he said, would be of no value politically  or militarily. Politically it would achieve nothing because Sinai would remain under enemy occupation. Militarily it would cause us more problems than the Israelis. Our  present defensive positions were protected by the canal, a formidable obstacle to enemy ground assaults or raids.  Shift our defenses over the canal and we would not only be  denying ourselves the canal as a barrier, we would be  creating fragile lines of communication over our Canal bridges. Sadiq was convinced that when we did launch our offensive it had to be forceful and unlimited: a clean, swift sweep through Sinai and the Gaza Strip to destroy the enemy concentrations.

I said I could agree with his idea if it were possible.

But how could we do it? We did not have the means and I saw no prospect of our getting them in the near future. If the Soviet Union supplied us with what we needed Sadiq said, we could launch the offensive inside a year, perhaps less. I failed to share his optimism. But when I repeated the analysis that had led me to propose a more limited plan, Saadiq brushed it aside. He asked me to draw up a plan for the liberation of all our occupied territory.

I could not agree. It was impossible because the resources were impossible. We would need vast quantities of equipment. Much of it was still under development; much of it the Soviet Union was not ready to give. Even if the Soviets did supply us, we would need several years to absorb it, especially into the air force and air defense system.

After long debate, GeneralSadiq accepted a compromise. Actually, in great secrecy, he accepted two. The overt compromise between us was that he accepted the idea of an offensive limited at least to the seizing of the key Sinai passes 30-40 miles east of the canal. This plan we called Operation 41. In reality, its only virtue was that it would need less equipment than a wholesale assault across Sinai, so the supplies list presented to the Soviets would be less traumatic. Therein lay the point. The preparation and development of Operation 41 was to be done in full collaboration with our Soviet advisers, so that they could form their own conclusions about our arms and equipment needs. After the strategic exercises, you might say, came the educational exercise.

Meanwhile, the real compromise between Sadiq and myself was that, in parallel with Operation 41 but in total secrecy from the Soviets, a second operation was to be planned: The High Minarets. This would be based more closely on the actual capability of our armed forces, as opposed to some notional capability after untold arms shipments. Its objective was the limited goal I had set of a five or six-mile penetration. By September 1971, though nobody outside a tight handful of our planning staff had ever heard its name, the outline of The High Minarets had been drawn. It was Egypt's first realistic offensive plan.

Operation 41 was also ready by September 1971, complete with its long list of arms equipment. Involving the Soviet advisers had still not prevented lengthy, well known arguments: the Soviets accusing us of exaggerating our needs; the Egyptians accusing Moscow of delaying the supply of offensive, as against defensive, weaponry. Even when President Sadat and General Sadiq flew to Moscow in October 1971 and concluded our biggest arms deal so far with the Soviet Union, not all the needs of Operation 41 were met. Despite the 100 MIG-21 FMs and the brigade of mobile SAM-6s the deal promised, our air defenses would remain too weak to repel enemy air strikes if we moved forces eastward beyond our umbrella of static SAMs.

But by then, my more immediate concern was the behavior of President Sadat. Apart from technical limitations, the other controlling factor was that, even if the new equipment arrived at once, it would take us six months to absorb it into service-say till April 1972. Taking over a new weapons system is not like picking up a knife and fork. But the President persisted in beating the drums of war, in speech after speech calling 1971 the "year of decision".  On his return from Moscow he declared himself Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, to demonstrate, he said, his determination to go to war before the end of the year. In their euphoric speculation, about the only thing the Egyptian media did not give was the date and time of our supposed attack.

Perturbed, I approached General Sadiq "The President  is putting us in a very difficult position," I said. "If we really are going to war this year, he is depriving us of do, any possible surprise. If we are not, he is giving Israel the excuse to launch a strike against us-and at the very is least to get still more weapons from the United States."  agreed totally. He said he had discussed the topic with the President. "I believe the President is making a political bluff," he said.

I was not much taken with this sort of bluffing. just to make certain it was not ourselves who were taken by surprise, by perhaps finding ourselves politically obliged to launch an offensive) I put in hand preparations to activate The High Minarets. But the "year of decision" faded and through 1972 our twin plans steadily developed. Operation 41 was renamed Granite Two, but in all but trivial details remained the same: objective, troops, directions of, attack, and so on. Equally few changes were made to The High Minarets.

As we entered the latter half of 1972, my assessment remained that of 1971. The High Minarets was the only plan possible with our actual resources. Granite Two remained a paper plan, impossible with the means at hand. Certainly, Granite Two exercised a certain fascination. The seizure of the passes would be such a dramatic victory. But the three reasons why it was impossible remained unchanged: the limited capability of our air force to carry out reconnaissance give air cover or provide ground support; our shortage of mobile SAMs to compensate for this; and the vulnerability of our ground forces' transport. To advance anything up to 45 miles into the desert before solving those problems would be, once again, tantamount to suicide.
 
 

At the end of October 1972, General Ahmad Isma`iyl `Aliy  was appointed Minister of War in succession to General Sadiq, I knew Isma`iyl `Aliy general views about war from a report he had prepared at the start of the year in his previous job as head of the National Intelligence Service.

It was a political and strategic estimate of the situation in the Middle East, drafted for the President but given limited distribution at the most senior levels. Isma`iyl  had concluded that Egypt was not ready for war. He warned that any attack mounted or led by Egypt under present conditions might lead to disaster. When I went to see the new Minister of War, therefore, to brief him on our plans and their genesis, I reminded him of what he had written.  "There have been no important changes in the armed forces since your report," I said, "especially in the air force and the mobile air defense system." But I added: "Even so, I do believe we can launch an attack with a limited objective."
 

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