Nasser And the Missile Age in the Middle East

This book demonstrates how Egyptian efforts to acquire long-range surface-to-surface missiles in the early 1960s provide an important case study in the field of ballistic missile proliferation and carry important lessons for the present-day scourge of weapons of mass destruction. It first traces the history of the early Egyptian ballistic missile program, beginning with the successful recruitment of German scientists who had prior experience in Hitler's V1 and V2 missile projects. It then demonstrates how Israel directed its formidable security apparatus to collect intelligence on and defeat Egypt's missile ambitions and how this intelligence sparked a crisis in the Israeli leadership as Israeli officials anxiously debated strategies to grapple with this new threat to their national security and finally adopted a multifaceted approach that focused on intimidating the scientists and their families, appealing to the West German government to order the scientists' recall, and attempting to get the US governmentinvolved in the intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Drawing on material from recently declassified US government documents, this volume demonstrates how Nasser's missile program played an instrumental role in cementing the US-Israeli national security relationship and concludes with several important lessons for the global proliferation of ballistic missile technologies. This book will be of great interest to scholars of proliferation, international relations, the Middle East, disarmament and security studies in general.