Nasser after the Naksa: ‘It was the system’s fault’

Just two months after the devastating June 1967 defeat, aka Naksa/setback, Gamal Abdel Nasser offered a remarkably frank assessment of the 15 years leading up to it. He described his own regime as paralyzed and rife with internal corruption and fear. Nasser stated, “This regime has brought us extremely negative outcomes, which are fundamentally rooted in fear. In my opinion, the situation has become rotten at all levels.”

In the “Top Secret” deliberations following Naksa, drawn from Nasser’s archived documents at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the former president appears to have lost hope in reforming the system he built, now corroded to its core. He spoke openly of the need to “liberate” the country from it and replace it with an “open system.”

At a meeting of the Arab Socialist Union’s Supreme Executive Committee on Aug. 4, 1967, after condemning the system as rotten, Nasser expanded his scathing critique to include the entire governing apparatus, lamenting “The regime started eating itself alive. One faction devoured the other, even at the highest levels.”

The Supreme Executive Committee was the powerful, innermost circle of Egypt's Arab Socialist Union/ASU, established by Nasser in 1962 as the nation's sole political party. Functioning as the ultimate decision-making body, it theoretically guided national policy, though in practice it served primarily to legitimize and implement Nasser's directives, aiming to centralize control and mobilize the populace behind his vision of Arab socialism.

During his speech, Nasser expressed deep concern that the regime deprived citizens of any sense of future security. “No matter how much reassurance you give the people, they won’t believe you. They’ll be afraid and they won’t trust you. The people controlling the country under this system have no conscience and no morals. One man could bring the country to ruin—and he might destroy the country, but he’d go down with it.”

Even at this moment of defeat, Nasser did not shy away from acknowledging the toxic impact of his personal relationship with Abdel Hakim Amer.

In the lead-up to the  1967 Six-Day War, Amer was a close friend and trusted deputy to Nasser. He held immense power as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. However, the crushing defeat in the Naksa exposed deep flaws in the military's readiness and leadership, widely attributed to Amer's command.

This military catastrophe shattered his long-standing bond with Nasser, leading to Amer's dismissal, subsequent arrest on coup plotting charges, and ultimately, his death under disputed circumstances shortly after the war.

“The example of Abdel Hakim is frightening, especially when it comes to private relationships within the system,” Nasser said in the meeting. “This is not the kind of life one sees in functional regimes.”

Amer had also been the central focus of the previous day’s committee meeting, framed around the absence of a professional military commander. Nasser admitted Amer lacked the qualifications for the position in an era of evolving warfare and modern leadership demands.

“Abdel Hakim is a civilian who last received military training in 1952. He just wears a military uniform,” Nasser said. He emphasized that the problem was not personal but structural, namely the absence of a mechanism for rotating leadership, as professional armies do.

“My opinion was that every three years, we needed new blood—like the Israelis do—and we should train someone on the latest tactics to take over.” He argued that the failure to do so led to stagnation and disconnection from global military advancements.

“Liberating the country from the system”

Nasser summed up the conclusions from both committee meetings at the Aug. 4 session, declaring that moving forward would not be possible through minor adjustments. “In my view, correcting the flaws of the current system is impossible,” he stated unequivocally.

Public trust, he argued, had been “shattered.” The solution had to be radical “If this closed system remains, I believe we must liberate the country from it by any means and transition to an open system.” He added, “We must eliminate the paralysis.”

However, this wasn’t Nasser’s initial reaction in the immediate aftermath of the war. It was a conclusion he took two months to reach, perhaps shaped by his meetings with fellow Arab leaders.

Meeting Al-Atassi: the first shock

Nasser’s first encounter with an Arab leader after the defeat came on June 16, when he met Syrian President Nureddin Al-Atassi. In recounting the events of the war, Nasser’s words revealed the magnitude of the shock. “We had our forces positioned the whole time, and our plans assumed that any attack on Syria would trigger an immediate response from us. But on Monday at 9 am, all our airbases were hit.”

At that stage, Nasser was still blaming external factors. He insisted the assault was premeditated, pointing to the massive Western military aid Israel received days before the war. He cited French Mystère fighter aircraft and American equipment matched only by what Washington and Moscow had.

Zakaria Mohieddin, the vice president who attended the meeting, added “The aircraft came from NATO via Denmark and the Netherlands.” Thus began a narrative filled with justifications, seeding the official discourse that would follow the defeat.

Meeting Boumédiène: dissecting the defeat

More than a month later, on July 10, Algerian President Houari Boumédiène met Nasser at the Qubba Palace. This time, Nasser’s tone was markedly more humble. He admitted that the Egyptian leadership still did not fully comprehend: “Honestly, up until now, we don’t understand how it happened,” he said, despite Egypt having spent "a billion pounds on weapons."

This admission marked a shift in focus inwards, an acknowledgment that Western political and military backing for Israel were not the sole factor.

Nasser attributed the defeat in part to excessive self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. “We believed we could take on Israel and even the [US] Sixth Fleet.”

Another cause, he said, was the appointment of unqualified individuals to sensitive military posts under the pretext of “security,” which led to a leadership collapse at the first real test.

He cited Air Force Commander Sedky Mahmoud, saying he was known to crumple under pressure since 1956 but “remained in place.” Nasser had even warned him that Israel would likely launch its first strike on Monday targeting Egyptian airfields, but the warning went unheeded. As Nasser put it, “Israeli planes reached our bases without anyone noticing.”

As the commander of the Air Force, Mohamed Sedky Mahmoud bore direct responsibility for the air arm's catastrophic unpreparedness and near-total destruction in the opening hours of the 1967 Six-Day War; notably, he was reportedly in a plane en route to inspect troops when the Israeli preemptive strikes began.

This devastating loss of air superiority proved pivotal to Egypt's swift defeat, leading to Sedky Mahmoud's dismissal, subsequent trial, and imprisonment as a key figure held accountable for the Naksa's military failures.

Meeting Arif: collapse of command

Two days after Boumédiène’s visit, Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Arif arrived at the Qubba Palace and asked directly about the cause of the defeat. Nasser responded with something akin to a confession.

He recounted how command collapsed inside the Egyptian Army’s operations room “There was a breakdown in the army leadership from the first night. By the morning, it had collapsed. I went to HQ early in the day, even before meeting with [Iraqi Prime Minister] Tahir Yahya. I met Yahya afterward, and by 10 a.m., I realized the battle was lost.”

When Arif raised the possibility of “betrayal,” Nasser denied any conspiracy, attributing the catastrophe to poor judgment “The real disaster was that we were prepared on the assumption that if the enemy attacked, we would immediately launch a counterattack. Some units were placed in exposed positions and were not dug in. Had they been entrenched, they could have held out much longer.”

Nasser also acknowledged the enemy's superior training and organization “The truth is, the Israelis were better than us. They trained and prepared better—in everything. I’m shocked.”

As for the Israeli airstrikes, Nasser described the harrowing scene “Their planes struck us like we were a herd of goats. No one even noticed!” He bitterly compared Egypt’s performance to Iraq’s, whose forces managed to down eight Israeli planes despite limited resources “Frankly, you were better than us.”

Nasser continued to expose or investigate the internal reasons behind the defeat, identifying Abdel Hakim Amer as a key contributor to the defeat due to his mishandling of the June 6 withdrawal. “We lost control of the situation and had to withdraw. There was no alternative.”

The June 6 withdrawal refers to the catastrophic and poorly executed order for Egyptian forces to retreat from the Sinai Peninsula on the second day of the 1967 Six-Day War. Issued by Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer after Israel's devastating air strikes, this chaotic command transformed a difficult battlefield situation into a full-blown rout, leading to the mass abandonment of equipment, heavy casualties, and the rapid Israeli occupation of the Sinai.

In his  meeting with Arif, Nasser noted that the 1956 withdrawal from Sinai had been “well-executed,” but in 1967 it was “a true disaster.”

The coup attempt

The month after his meetings with the three Arab leaders, Nasser chaired a cabinet meeting on Aug. 27, where he addressed “Abdel Hakim Amer’s plot to overthrow the regime”—a matter he said he had postponed discussing multiple times.

He told his ministers that on June 9, the day he announced his resignation, he had received a call from War Minister Shams Badran informing him that “The field-marshal is asking you to decide on his position now. He has 500 officers at his house demanding his return!”

Nasser made no mention of Amer’s fate in his resignation speech. Amer had been formally dismissed that same day and never returned to office after Nasser resumed the presidency. The situation escalated, with Nasser later being told that “around 700 officers were demanding Abdel Hakim’s return to the army. Then I was informed that they had gone to military HQ based on telephone instructions.”

Nasser described how Amer fortified his house with “trenches, bunkers, and weapons.” He defied presidential orders and was accused of forming a subversive nucleus inside the army, planning to distribute leaflets against the leadership.

Nasser responded decisively: he dismissed the army’s senior leadership, appointed General Mohamed Fawzi as commander-in-chief, and ordered Amer’s house in Giza to be surrounded. As tensions mounted, Amer was forced to surrender. His men were disarmed, and he was moved to a guarded location, where he later died—officially by suicide, though suspicions linger.

According to another account, reported by the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram, senior officers presented Amer with a grim ultimatum during his house arrest: either stand trial for treason or take his own life by poison. He chose the latter.

https://youtu.be/P9wi1_B-A6w

A frustrated dream of an open system

At the ASU’s executive committee meeting on Aug. 4, Nasser delved into how his regime had splintered into factions centered around four key figures: Abdel Hakim Amer, Zakaria Mohieddin, Vice President Ali Sabri (the minister responsible for the Suez Canal Zone), and Nasser himself.

He warned “Each one of the four tries to eliminate the others; in the end, all four collapse.”

Nasser argued that this was the “starting point” for a new Egypt. “Opposition cannot be manufactured,” he said. “It must be real. There must be struggle—and survival for the strongest and the most competent.”

He floated the idea of transitioning to a two-party system and even named possible opposition leaders: Kamal El-Din Hussein and Abdel Latif Boghdadi—both Free Officers who had held senior positions before resigning in the early 1960s.

Nasser acknowledged that a two-party system would allow rivals to reach power and concluded, “If the only path is to create two parties and accept the challenge, then so be it.”

His vision was to replace a fragile structure with a robust one, saying the regime had been building “houses of sand” for 15 years, and now it was time to build “with reinforced concrete.”

Other committee members, including Anwar Sadat, Ali Sabri, and Zakaria Mohieddin, voiced reservations—especially about the timing of introducing a two-party system before what journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal called “erasing the consequences of the aggression.”

Nasser himself, despite championing party pluralism, admitted the debate was unresolved “Discussions are ongoing, and I’m still unconvinced—both in principle and about timing. We must revisit the issue in January.”

Despite the enthusiasm behind the proposal for party pluralism, momentum quickly dissipated. Al Manassa’s review of all committee and cabinet meetings after the Naksa until Nasser’s death shows no concrete moves towards implementing his August 1967 ideas.

Instead, economic reform, the war with Israel, and Egypt’s international relations dominated discussions. Focus also turned to restructuring state institutions, reshuffling company leadership, and limited cabinet changes—efforts Nasser often framed as “true political representation of the people.”

But the “real opposition” he called for never emerged from within the regime. Nor was the system ready to grant it any legitimacy.

Nasser did put the air force commanders on trial, but after sentences were handed down in Feb. 1968, Cairo erupted in massive student and labor protests. They condemned the rulings as too lenient and, in a matter of months, the crowds that had begged Nasser not to step down were demanding deep reforms to his system.

Protesters chanted for “strengthening political foundations,” “dissolving the National Assembly, which represents nothing,” “press freedom,” and “removing security and intelligence forces from universities.” Nasser acknowledged the importance of these demands during a Socialist Union meeting.

But the president’s agreement with such slogans wasn’t enough. Authorities cracked down, triggering violent clashes—especially near the university bridge and Tahrir Square—where demonstrators were dispersed forcefully, and many were arrested.

At the first meeting of the new cabinet in Mar. 1968, Nasser insisted the new ministers represented the people not symbolically or technically, but politically. “Each of them has practiced political work in their own domain,” he said. “They all have experience in public affairs—whether in universities, the Socialist Union, or executive offices.”

Still, most of the new ministers came from within the Socialist Union—the very organization Nasser had earlier deemed “incapable of producing real opposition.” Having already removed the three other pillars of his four-way split—Amer by suicide, Sabri and Mohieddin by exclusion from the new government—Nasser returned with a reform package that sidestepped the radical vision he once proposed: dismantling the regime he had built over a decade and a half.

What seemed a fundamental turning point at the time, in hindsight, was little more than a tactical retreat under the weight of bitter defeat—without truly altering the rules of the game set in the mid-1950s.