Arab–Israeli conflict participate in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and later backed Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In June 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed newly built Iraqi nuclear facilities in Operation Opera. During the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles into Israel, in the hopes of uniting the Arab world against the coalition which sought to liberate Kuwait. At the behest of the United States, Israel did not respond to this attack in order to prevent a greater outbreak of war. In 1970, following an extended civil war, King Hussein
Soviet Union and the Arab–Israeli conflict the Soviet Union's Middle East agenda. Soviet Union and the Arab–Israeli conflict The Soviet Union played a significant role in the Arab–Israeli conflict as the conflict was a major part of the Cold War. For related developments after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, see "Russia and the Arab–Israeli conflict". The official Soviet ideological position on Zionism condemned the movement as akin to bourgeois nationalism. Lenin, claiming to be deeply committed to egalitarian ideals and universality of all humanity, rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, "bourgeois nationalism", "socially retrogressive", and a backward force that deprecates class divisions among