Suez Crisis

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 26th of July 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser stood before a crowd in Alexandria and delivered a speech that would trigger one of the most consequential diplomatic disasters of the twentieth century. Buried in his remarks was a code word: the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. The moment Egyptian officers heard that name, they seized control of the waterway. Within days, Britain, France, and Israel were secretly plotting an invasion. Within weeks, the United States and the Soviet Union were threatening the invaders. The questions that follow are not simply about a canal. They are about whether old empires could still act independently in a world reshaped by two new superpowers, and what happens when they discover the answer is no.

• 2. The Canal and Its Weight

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  The Suez Canal opened in 1869, financed jointly by the French and Egyptian governments. By the time Britain purchased a 44% stake in the operating company from a financially distressed Egypt in 1875, paying £4 million for the shares, the canal had already become the shortest ocean link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. After occupying Egypt outright in 1882, Britain effectively controlled not just the canal's operations but its finances and the surrounding territory.

  By the mid-twentieth century the canal carried a staggering volume of energy. Western Europe was importing two million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East, with roughly 1,200,000 of those barrels arriving by tanker through the canal. The alternative pipeline routes, running from Kirkuk and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, were prone to disruption. British leaders consistently preferred the sea route for that reason.

  In October 1951, Egypt unilaterally cancelled the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which had granted Britain a 20-year lease on the Suez base. Britain refused to leave. The standoff produced mounting violence. Then in January 1952, British forces tried to disarm an auxiliary police barracks in Ismailia, killing 41 Egyptians. Anti-Western riots consumed Cairo the next day, killing foreigners and destroying property. Six months later, the Free Officers Movement led by Muhammad Neguib and a young colonel named Nasser overthrew King Farouk entirely.

• 3. Nasser's Calculations

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  Nasser did not drift into confrontation with the West; he engineered it. The CIA offered him a $3 million bribe to join the proposed Middle East Defense Organization, a NATO-style body the Eisenhower administration hoped would contain Soviet influence. Nasser took the money and refused to join. He wanted an Egyptian-dominated Arab League as the primary defense structure in the region, one that he controlled.

  In September 1955, news broke that Egypt had purchased a large quantity of Soviet arms through Czechoslovakia. The deal had been quietly negotiated during 1954-55 as Nasser played the superpowers against each other, using the threat of Soviet arms to pressure Washington into selling him weapons. Instead of the desired American arsenal, he got something even more useful: proof that Egypt could arm itself without Western permission.

  The Israeli raid on Egyptian Army headquarters in Gaza in February 1955, which killed an Israeli civilian in its origins as a fedayeen attack, ended whatever restraint Nasser had shown on the Palestinian question. He began authorising fedayeen raids into Israel from bases not only in Gaza but also in Jordan and Lebanon. In March 1956, Nasser sponsored demonstrations in Amman that led King Hussein to dismiss John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of the Arab Legion, known to the Arabs as Glubb Pasha. That dismissal consumed British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. One British politician recalled Eden's reaction: Nasser must be destroyed.

  On the 16th of May 1956, Nasser officially recognised the People's Republic of China. Eisenhower, already irritated and persuaded that the Aswan Dam project exceeded Egypt's economic capacity, withdrew all American financial support for the dam on the 19th of July. A week later, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the canal.

• 4. The Secret Agreement at Sevres

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  France had been arming Israel since early 1955, partly because Nasser was funding and supplying the Algerian National Liberation Front rebels fighting French rule. By 1956 France had agreed to disregard the Tripartite Declaration entirely and send even more weapons to Israel. In August, the French government privately asked Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion whether Israel would join a joint attack on Egypt. Israel agreed and planning began.

  Britain and France pursued a parallel diplomatic track through the summer, hosting a London conference in August that brought together 22 nations who used the canal. Fifteen supported international operation of the waterway, but Nasser rejected the proposal when Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies carried it to Cairo in September. Menzies hinted that force might follow rejection. Eisenhower publicly blocked that path, insisting the crisis had to be resolved peacefully and warning Eden that American public opinion would be outraged if all peaceful routes were not exhausted first.

  The British and French privately viewed diplomacy as time to buy while their troops moved into position. Between the 22nd and the 24th of October 1956, representatives of France, Israel, and the United Kingdom met in Sevres, France, and agreed on what became the Protocol of Sevres. Israel would attack Egypt on the 29th of October. Britain and France would then issue a joint ultimatum demanding both sides pull back ten miles from the canal. Since Israel already knew the plan, rejection by Egypt was guaranteed. On the 31st of October, British and French forces would attack. General Charles Keightley was already in place as commander of the Anglo-French force, with French Admiral Pierre Barjot as his deputy. The operation was called Musketeer.

• 5. Three Armies, One Canal

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  Israel attacked on the 29th of October 1956, with Israeli Air Force Mustangs striking Egyptian positions across the Sinai at around 3:00 pm. Egyptian commander Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer initially treated the invasion reports as describing a large raid rather than a full offensive. His delay in ordering a general alert allowed Israeli forces to advance significantly before Egypt fully mobilised.

  On the ground, Israeli operations moved across multiple objectives simultaneously. The 9th Infantry Brigade captured Ras al-Naqb during the night of 29-the 30th of October; the 4th Infantry Brigade struck al-Qusaymah. Ariel Sharon's forces assaulted Themed before dawn, then attacked Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan. The battle cost 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers. Abu Uwayulah, defended by 3,000 Egyptians of the 17th and 18th battalions of the 3rd Infantry Division under Colonel Sami Yassa, held out from the 30th of October to the 1st of November before the defenders, running low on ammunition and water, were forced to retreat.

  The fighting at Kafr Qasim on the 29th of October produced one of the most disturbing incidents of the war. Because Israeli intelligence feared Jordan might enter the conflict, the Israel Border Police militarised the Israel-Jordan border and placed Arab villages near it under curfew. The enforcement of that curfew at the Arab village of Kafr Qasim resulted in the deaths of 48 civilians.

  At Sharm el-Sheikh, the last Israeli objective, Colonel Abraham Yoffe's 9th Infantry Brigade faced a strongly fortified position and difficult terrain with no good roads linking it to the attacking force. An attack around midnight on the 4th of November failed. On the morning of the 5th of November, a massive artillery barrage and napalm strikes preceded a renewed assault. At 9:30 am, Egyptian commander Colonel Raouf Mahfouz Zaki surrendered. The Israelis lost 10 killed and 32 wounded; the Egyptians lost around 100 killed, 31 wounded, and 864 taken prisoner.

  British and French forces entered the fight on the 31st of October, beginning with bombing campaigns from airfields in Cyprus and Malta. By the night of the 1st of November, Egypt's air force had lost 200 planes. On the 5th of November, paratroopers from the 3rd Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment dropped on El Gamil Airfield, led by Brigadier M.A.H. Butler. At the same time, French Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Chateau-Jobert landed with a force of the 2nd RPC at Raswa. At first light on the 6th of November, Royal Marines of No. 42 and 40 Commando stormed the beaches. No. 45 Commando assaulted by helicopter, the first time British forces had ever lifted men directly into a combat zone this way. Shore batteries struck several helicopters; a carrier-based Wyvern mistakenly fired on 45 Commando and headquarters, killing one Marine and wounding 15. Total Royal Marine casualties in the Port Said landings were nine killed and 60 wounded.

  Nasser responded by declaring a people's war, ordering Egyptian troops to change into civilian clothes and distributing weapons freely to civilians. This placed the British in a difficult position: treat every civilian as a potential combatant, or risk snipers attacking with near impunity. Heavy urban fighting damaged much of Port Said and killed many civilians. Egyptian total losses to both the Israeli and Anglo-French operations were estimated at 1,650-3,650 dead and roughly 4,900 wounded, with around 1,000 civilian deaths. Israeli losses were 172 dead and 817 wounded.

• 6. Washington's Veto

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  Anthony Eden announced a ceasefire on the 6th of November, without warning either France or Israel in advance. The military assessment at the time was that the Suez Canal could have been taken completely within another 24 hours. Port Said was already overrun. The ceasefire came not from military necessity but from financial reality.

  Between the 30th of October and the 2nd of November, the Bank of England had lost $45 million. With Britain's oil supply cut off by the closure of the canal and an Arab oil embargo, the British government sought immediate assistance from the International Monetary Fund. The United States blocked the request. Eisenhower also ordered Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey to prepare to sell part of the US government's sterling bond holdings. Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan told Eden that Britain's foreign exchange reserves could not survive the resulting devaluation. Within weeks, the country would be unable to import sufficient food and energy.

  Eisenhower's position was principled but also tactical. The United States was simultaneously pressing the Soviet Union over its violent suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Vice-President Richard Nixon later explained that the United States could not credibly protest Soviet intervention in Hungary while approving of British and French intervention against Egypt. The Americans also feared that supporting an attack on an Arab country would push the entire Arab world toward the Soviet Union.

  Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin added his own pressure, threatening rocket attacks on Britain, France, and Israel. The West did not know at the time that the Soviets lacked the intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry out the threat. The menace was enough. The Anglo-French Task Force withdrew by the 22nd of December 1956, replaced by Danish and Colombian units of the newly created United Nations Emergency Force. The Israelis withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza in March 1957, but only after destroying roads, railways, and telephone lines and confiscating Egyptian National Railways equipment for use by Israel Railways.

• 7. Who Won and What It Cost

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  The conflict produced a military victory for the coalition and a political victory for Egypt. Nasser kept the canal. His standing in the Arab world and across the wider developing world rose dramatically, even as his own country had been militarily defeated.

  For Britain, the damage went deeper than a lost campaign. Historians have argued the crisis marked the end of Britain's role as an independent great power. The episode confirmed that British foreign policy could not succeed without American consent, a constraint that had not visibly bound the country before. Eden resigned in January 1957, his health and reputation destroyed. Paradoxically, Harold Macmillan, whose Treasury warnings had helped force the ceasefire and who some in the Cabinet suspected had overstated the financial danger to push Eden out, succeeded him as Prime Minister.

  For the Soviet Union, the crisis was a windfall. Khrushchev publicly claimed that his threat of rocket attacks had saved Egypt, a narrative Nasser found politically useful even though he privately acknowledged it was American economic pressure that had forced the ceasefire. The first Soviet Navy warships to traverse the canal since World War I did so shortly after it reopened. Khrushchev interpreted the episode as proof that nuclear brinkmanship worked, a view that contributed to a long sequence of Cold War confrontations including the Berlin crisis beginning in November 1958 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

  For France, the crisis accelerated the decision to build an independent nuclear deterrent rather than rely on American protection. For West Germany, it deepened interest in a European third force in the Cold War. The analyst's view that the crisis emboldened the USSR also connects it to the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which Moscow was able to execute with limited international consequences while Western attention focused on Egypt.

  For Canada, the outcome was a Nobel Peace Prize. External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson, working alongside UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, designed the United Nations Emergency Force proposal that made a ceasefire politically viable for all sides. The canal itself reopened fully to shipping by the 24th of April 1957. Israel secured freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, which had been closed since 1950, and an eleven-year period of relative quiet on its southern border. But no peace settlement followed the war, and in October 1965 Eisenhower told Republican supporter Max M. Fisher that he greatly regretted forcing Israel to withdraw from the Sinai peninsula. The unresolved tensions between Egypt and Israel that the 1956 war left behind laid the groundwork for the Six-Day War in 1967.