"Something's happened in the motorcade...":the assassination of Gamal Abdel Nasser

[Chris Oakley]

May 12th, 1967. Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser is en route to a massive propaganda rally in downtown Cairo. Neither he nor his cabinet ministers, nor the massive police detail escorting him to the rally, are aware that a middle-aged laborer driven mad by grief and bitterness over the loss of his two sons during the Suez crisis eleven years earlier is waiting in the crowd with a loaded revolver to shoot the Egyptian president. As Nasser reaches the midway point of his trip, the laborer pulls out his gun and squeezes off three shots, two of which hit Nasser smack in the side of the head; Nasser is immediately rushed to a Cairo hospital only to succumb to his wounds barely six hours later, by which time his assassin is in police custody and Egypt is in a state of shock and panic.

What next?

 

[Chris Oakley]

Anybody?

 

[maverick]

This is a blow to arab nationalism, but then again, so was losing all those wars...Maybe Egypt foes from United Arab Republic to Egypt earlier...they kept the name until 1971 even when Syria had left in 1961...Whether the Six days war still occurs depends on who succeeds Nasser...Chances are, this guy , Abdel Hakim amer, VP, deputy commander in Chief, etc..takes over, of course, during the war of 1967 he panicked, retreat and thus became responsible for Egypt's defeat in that war...whether that is because he was a coward or because being on the frontlines when the Israeli attacked, I still see a war in 1967...since Amer strikes me as the kind of guy to continue with the successful predecesor's policies and keep the straits of Tiran closed...

 

[Matthais Corvinus]

This is a blow to arab nationalism, but then again, so was losing all those wars...Maybe Egypt foes from United Arab Republic to Egypt earlier...they kept the name until 1971 even when Syria had left in 1961...Whether the Six days war still occurs depends on who succeeds Nasser...Chances are, this guy , Abdel Hakim amer, VP, deputy commander in Chief, etc..takes over, of course, during the war of 1967 he panicked, retreat and thus became responsible for Egypt's defeat in that war...whether that is because he was a coward or because being on the frontlines when the Israeli attacked, I still see a war in 1967...since Amer strikes me as the kind of guy to continue with the successful predecesor's policies and keep the straits of Tiran closed...

If Nasser get killed in '67, its going to really, REALLY disrupt the planning for the war. Nasser might have talked about Arab Nationalism and Socialism, but he was a military dictator, who took power in a coup. Once he dies, there is going to be a power struggle. The man who was Nasser's number two might not be the successor. He probably didn't become a military dictator's right hand man through his independence of action and leadership ability.

I'm guessing that there is going to a few rounds of internal leadership changes. Maybe some street fighting. Nixon is going to be elected in '68, and start looking to do some detente with the Soviets. Trying to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, or at least pull the Egyptians out of the Soviet orbit, could go toward that. So the Americans interfere in Egyptian politics. Maybe offer a better weapons deal to the United Arab Republic, offer American jets, whatever it is. A young and upcoming general, or an older member of the original Free Officers (Sadat comes to mind).

If Egypt is in that kind of flux, and Nixon has the chance to get Egypt onside with the US, then I think he would go for it.

 

[Chris Oakley]

Yeah, Tricky Dick was definitely the kind of guy who liked to stir the pot.

And I'd have to agree with Maverick that we still would have had a war in 1967...the chief difference in this timeline being that it would have ended even earlier than six days given the way Amer panicked in OTL when the heat was turned up on the battlefront.