Suez Crisis
Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt in October 1956 in a plan they had agreed in secret and then denied. Nasser had nationalised the Suez Canal Company in July after the United States and Britain withdrew financing for the Aswan dam, and he had done it legally, with compensation offered to shareholders, and to enormous popular acclaim across the Arab world. Eden regarded him as a dictator to be stopped in the manner of the 1930s, France resented his support for the Algerian rebellion, and Israel wanted the Straits of Tiran opened and the fedayeen raids stopped. The three met at Sèvres and agreed the sequence: Israel would invade Sinai, Britain and France would issue an ultimatum to both sides to withdraw from the canal, and would then occupy it as peacekeepers when Egypt refused. The military operation worked and the political one did not. Eisenhower, who had not been told and who was fighting an election on peace while denouncing the Soviet invasion of Hungary the same week, was furious. A run on sterling followed and Washington blocked the loan from the International Monetary Fund that would have stopped it. Britain accepted a ceasefire on 6 November and withdrew. The consequences were general: Eden resigned, France concluded that the Americans were unreliable and pursued its own nuclear force, Nasser became the pre-eminent Arab leader, and the pretence that Britain could act as a great power independently ended. The collusion was denied in the House of Commons and the Sèvres protocol was not admitted for decades. Britain's own copy was destroyed on Eden's instruction, and the surviving text is the one the Israelis kept.
- Year: 1956 CE
- Category: Military
