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Looking on at another outburst of Arab street hate, the U.S. could be grateful for being out of the line of fire for once. It was refreshing to hear Nasser speak for the first time of "a Communist reign of terror," and to have Kassem denounce not the West but Nasser. And to hear the Communists, rather than the Western powers, accused of dividing the Arab nation was a welcome change. Yet those who now instinctively saw in Nasser a welcome new ally overlooked his own heavy and continuing dependence on the Soviet bloc. London's conservative Daily Telegraph noted the irony that it was Nasser who first invited into the Middle East the Communist forces that now opposed him so effectively. But more than irony was involved. Nasser still did not rebuke Moscow, only those Arabs loyal to it. Communist countries now take 59% of Egypt's exports. They support the U.A.R.'s economy with an estimated $600 million line of credit. They supply arms—jets and tanks, and Russians to train their operators—with a lavishness that the U.S. has no intention of matching. As recently as last December, the Soviet Union acquired by agreement all construction rights for the first five years' work on Nasser's pet project, the Aswan Dam, despite a counteroffer from West Germany that would have involved no political strings.
Family Quarrel. The Russians thus had a continuing hold on both Nasser and Kassem. The British, radiating a little more optimism than perhaps the circumstances warranted, still talked of Kassem's capacity to resist, if need be, the Communist help he depended upon to crush the Mosul revolt. (So long as Baghdad keeps independent of Cairo, the British think they can save their valuable oil principality of Kuwait from falling to Nasser.) Washington's reaction was to take no sides in what it called an Arab "family quarrel." Nasser's disenchantment with the Communists may now have gone a little farther than Kassem's, but neither was yet showing any signs of the wish, or the capacity, to break with Moscow.