On this week’s History of Israel Explained, things get serious with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. Just six years after the stunning victory of the Six-Day War, the 1973 war meant near disaster for Israel.

The Yom Kippur War brings United States and USSR to brink of conflict.

The surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel in October 1973 throws the Middle East into turmoil and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Though actual combat did not break out between the two nations, the events surrounding the Yom Kippur War seriously damaged U.S.-Soviet relations and all but destroyed President Richard Nixon’s much publicized policy of detente. CLICK FOR MORE at History.com