Nasser's many enemies

Ron Unz himself has stepped up, or into, the USS Liberty affair 1967. Here, the word is that Lyndon Johnson was out for a pretext to bomb a Soviet airbase west of Cairo . . . with nuclear weapons. Aim was to topple Nasser, not just to cripple him as the Israelis had already done; replacing him with a less meddlesome pro-American.

Thus triggering the "For All Time" alt-history; but at the time Johnson thought he wanted to be President, and cared more about that than about life on... anywhere.

To add to Unz' theory on Johnson's devilry, in light of House of Saud, that replacement likely would have been Anwar Sadat, who in fact would replace Nasser not all that long afterward. Sadat was, however, even more anti-Israel. Thus pulling responsibility even more from Israel and toward Johnson than Unz would allow.

I should add that Israel was not Nasser's only enemy. Nor was Israel the only anti-Soviet bastion of the region.

Nasser and Sadat over the 1960s meddled hard in the Yemen, unseating the Imam from Sanaa and installing a somewhat popular but weak "democracy". The Sauds made the place even more chaotic than the Yemeni usual, bleeding Nasser dry. In the end the Egyptians retreated, leaving Saudi with the mess. (Saleh would take Sanaa about a decade later I think, and more-or-less stay there. But irrelevant to 1967.) Another annoyance for Saudi is when King Saud himself fled to Egypt under Nasser's protection.

Over the 1967 war, the next Saudi king Faisal did diddly. He just sent some troops into the Transjordan to shore up the Hashemi king, leaving the West Bank to... what it is. No Saudi landed in Sinai nor did any approach Suez.

I do not recall that Holden and Johns said anything about the Liberty. King Faisal sincerely hated Jews and Israel. Although... that was of a piece with his anti-Communism, suggesting he'd have hated Nasser that bit more. The Sauds should, then, have been Monitoring The Situation same as the Liberty was.

Seems to me that there are a lot of archives in Israel and Saudi which haven't been opened and should be.