She could feel the restiveness behind her on the government benches; and idly wondered who would be the first to plunge a knife between her shoulder blades.
“President Kennedy has invited me to America to discuss a new resolution of our long-term relationship. When an old friend offers such an invitation it must be accepted. If I remain Prime Minister after this day I will fly to American on Friday.”
Margaret Thatcher let this sink in.
“Immediately prior to leaving my private office for this House I was informed that a Royal Navy submarine had attacked and sunk the Argentine aircraft carrier the Indepencia. The Indepencia was fifteen miles outside the declared air and maritime Total Exclusion Zone mandated by the UAUK,” she paused as the mutter of voices in the hall threatened to sweep her away. “However, in the last twenty-four hours Argentine warships and aircraft flying from the Indepencia, have harassed and threatened British registered vessels sailing in international waters inside and outside the total exclusion zone. Another of our submarines has since attacked and sunk an Argentine destroyer that was attempting to illegally escort the British registered Motor Vessel Stanley Caird towards Argentine territorial waters after firing on and apprehending that vessel in international waters.”
To the Prime Minister’s surprise the threatened uproar subsided to a whimper of bad tempered growling. She had anticipated and prepared for many things; she had not seriously contemplated the possibility that Honourable Members on both sides of the House would be genuinely shocked.
“The blockade of the Falklands Archipelago will continue to be vigorously enforced. If the Argentine wishes, by pursuing aggressive measures against British shipping and interests in international waters or anywhere in the Southern Ocean inside or outside the specified exclusion zones, we will meet force with force. Honourable Members should know that the captain of every Royal Navy submarine deployed to the South Atlantic was handed a sealed envelope bearing orders signed by Flag Officer Submarines and countersigned by me. Our captains are authorised to take whatever offensive measures they deem appropriate including the sinking without warning of merchant vessels conveying supplies to the Argentine forces currently occupying the Falklands Archipelago in breach of international law.”
Margaret Thatcher had found her second wind.
The pitch of her voice became hectoring, defiantly angry.
“RAF bombers have mounted attacks against Red Army troop concentrations and communications targets in Northern Iraq for the third successive night. During these attacks several large ‘Tallboy’ type six-ton bombs were dropped on bridges around Sulaymaniyah and elsewhere. No aircraft were lost or damaged in any of these missions.”
The Prime Minister’s gaze swept around the chamber.
“Neither I nor any member of my government will be supplying daily updates on the war in Iraq, or on the measures that we are taking to protect our interests in the Persian Gulf. However, I will tell you that if the High Command of the Soviet Union thinks, for a single minute that we and our allies will sit back and allow the Red Army to invade and rape Iraq and Iran without exacting a terrible cost on it in terms of men, materiel and morale, it is tragically mistaken. It is the policy of my government to resist tyranny; and while I live we will never surrender. I say to the men in the new Kremlin — wherever that vile new incarnation of the evil empire may now be located in southern Russia — that no matter what ground your tanks seize we will never rest until you are expelled from it. You may defeat us in one battle, you may defeat us in many battles but we will never, ever give in. You are responsible for the abomination of Red Dawn, for the despicable use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt.”
She had grown breathless with rage; forced herself to take several deep breaths.
“You are criminals responsible for the obliteration of Tehran,” she spat. “After that atrocity I warned you that a further use of nuclear weapons would result in an all-out strike against your remaining centres of population. I have not yet received an unequivocal acknowledgement of this warning. I demand that the Soviet High Command provide such an unequivocal acknowledgement not later than midnight on 27th May,” she paused, “or be prepared to face the consequences.”
Chapter 33
Muhammad Anwar El Sadat was a cautious, calculating man; it was no accident that he had risen to be the President of Egypt’s right hand man and at some stage, possibly, his friend Abdel Gamal Nasser’s successor. But all that was a long way in the future — if it happened at all — for he and Nasser were relatively young men in their mid-forties, and Nasser was one of those rare, once in a lifetime men, who was touched with greatness. While Sadat was less enthralled by dreams of a pan-Arabic, or some kind of ‘united’ Arab Republic enfolding the ‘Arab World’ like a ‘string of pearls’ than his friend, if it was any man’s destiny to reunite the ‘Arab World’ that man was almost certainly Nasser and his time was now.
Or if his time was not now then it was very soon.
Becoming embroiled in the Yemen civil war last year — contained mostly in the north of that country, thank Allah — was in retrospect a false start in the process of reunification. But of course nobody had actually known what sign they were waiting for in the first place. The bombing of Ismailia and the Soviet Invasion of Iran and Iraq had changed all that. Egypt had been a Russian client in the years before the October War, and consequently its Army and Air Force was largely equipped with Red Army and Red Air Force surplus weaponry. The failed attack on Cairo — the missile launched, according to the United States and the British from within the borders of the old Soviet Union had detonated beyond the Pyramids of Giza — and the devastating strike on Ismailia, had given the government the excuse to round up former Soviet observers and advisors in the country, and hopefully, freed the Egyptian military from their grasp.
Nasser had no more wanted the Russians in his country than he had the British but timing was everything; and now fate had gifted Egypt a fleeting opportunity to achieve in weeks and months the task that Nasser and Sadat had hardly dreamed of even beginning in their own lifetimes. The prize was so immense it justified almost any risks and that was the problem, because if they were thinking in such terms then surely, so were their real enemies among whom they included both the Americans and the British.
Gamal Abdel Nasser was standing framed in the window of his opulent Presidential Office when Sadat was shown into his presence. Nasser had been staring out across the inner courtyard of the old hotel, lost in his thoughts. The idea of laying the foundation of an unbreakable United Arab Republic which might one day stretch from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the Zagros Mountains of Western Iran, and from the Anatolian plains to the Mountains of the Moon, the fabled source of the great Nile was fatally seductive. It was a thing more to do with myths and legends; a challenge best taken up by a modern day Alexander and Nasser understood as much. However, with the Americans gone, the British otherwise engaged, the Iraqi Army routed by the invaders and the whole Middle East in turmoil; when would there ever be a better time to assert Egypt’s ancient supremacy?