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EGYPT’S Nasser had stood in solidarity with freedom fighters like Sukarno of Indonesia, Nehru of India and Tito of Yugoslavia at the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in April 1955. Gaining the stature and charisma of a statesman, he took on the role of the leader of the pan-Arabs movement.  

To the then  US Vice President Nixon he was like “a meteor that shot across the skies of the Middle East” that entranced the much oppressed Arab populations in the whole region. 

In keeping with the Bandung Spirit, Nasser maintained friendly relations with both the Soviet Union and the United States. Since Egypt was poor and lacked natural resources, Nasser had the vision of pulling his country out of poverty by building a dam at Aswan at the southern end of his country to unlock the rich agricultural lands along the Nile. 

The plan was accordingly submitted to the World Bank and the IMF.  Initially backed by the United States and Britain, the Aswan High Dam project was considered economically viable. However, when the U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles learned of Nasser’s intention to buy arms from the Soviet bloc, he abruptly killed U.S. sponsorship, thereby stopping the financing for the dam. In response, Nasser publicly spurned the aid, pointing to the many conditions in the fine print,  he alleged that the West had surreptitiously attempted to turn Egypt into a neo-colony.

Nasser then made the fateful decision to nationalise the Suez Canal.  The fees for using the Canal could then be used to finance the building of the dam. By itself, this move to nationalize an asset essential to the country’s security was not as belligerent as it had been made out to be by the British press which started baying for his blood.

The nationalisation of the Canal was as unpalatable as the nationalization of the Iranian oilfields by its popular Prime Minister Mohammad Moussadeq who in May 1953 nationalized the Abadan refinery and oilfields of Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation (AIOC), in which the British government was its main corporate shareholder. 

Nasser, however, had agreed to compensate the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company in which the British and French governments were the major shareholders. It was therefore more from a hurt pride that the two governments were unable to accept the deal. 

Eden felt humiliated by an upstart. The British plan to secure their oil interests in the Gulf with the “Baghdad Pact” was frustrated when the Arab populations in the region gravitated towards Nasser.

Eden’s reaction to the nationalisation was, according to American diplomat, George Ball, “neurotic”. More to the point, perhaps, was that both Britain and France felt humiliated, having been put in their place by a mere colonel, and much worse, in their eyes, an Egyptian.

“For an Egyptian ex-colonel to twist the lion’s tail, and get away with it, was a palpable and lasting blow to national self esteem and international prestige” (G.C. Peden,  “Suez and Britain’s Decline as a World Power,” The Historical Journal, 2012, quoting D. Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century  (London, 1991). 

The French also saw the pan-Arabic movement fostered by Nasser a threat to their interests in Algeria, suspecting Nasser of financing the insurgents.

Israel was at the time still technically at war with Egypt. Following an attack on its agents in Cairo, Israel started an incident at Gaza. France saw an opportunity to use the Israelis to create a “cassus belli”. They would encourage the Israelis to attack Egypt and move across the Sinai towards the Canal. Britain and France would then issue an “ultimatum to the combatants to cease fighting, failing which they would jointly occupy the Canal Zone to protect International shipping”.

They hoped the occupation would then quickly become a fait accompli, and Nasser would be forced to agree to international control of the Canal. The belligerents held a secret meeting at Sevres in France.

The idea of using the Israelis was attributed to Harold Macmillan who was at the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer and conceivably next in line to take over from Eden. Confirmation of this was traced to a memorandum he sent to the Prime Minister before the cabinet meeting on the matter:

“I feel that we must make use of Israel against Egypt, if the military operation is actually taken.”

Macmillan was one of the members of the Eden Cabinet taken into confidence, and indeed, commented Peden (above), Macmillan was one of the ministers “keenest on invading Egypt”.

The Israelis were all in on the idea, they were eager to square off with Egypt, and had set their sights on seizing the Straits of Tiran in the South. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion himself attended the meeting at Sevres. The plan was for the Israeli forces to move against Egyptian forces in Gaza and the Sinai. The plan was a Godsend for Ben Gurion, he writes:

“The 1956 Suez Campaign achieved one incalculably great a advantage for Israel. It cleared the southern gateway to the sea by liberating the Tiran area. Thus it gave our country access to shipping on a worldwide basis and independent of Suez.” (David Ben Gurion, Recollections, MacDonald Unit 75, 1970).

Macmillan, who had worked with General Eisenhower during the Second World War, had kept in touch with the President, and had met with him before the incident. He did not, however, reveal the plan to the Americans but had somewhat given to the cabinet the impression that the Americans would, “lie doggo” during the operation. (Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (London: Widenfeld & Nicholson, 2009).

Eisenhower was reported to have been taken by surprise.  Irked by what he saw as the irresponsible action of the two minor allies during his election year no less, he refused to be drawn into the scheme or to stay neutral. Instead he threatened sanctions and to withdraw IMF support for the weakening Sterling. 

Without the overt support of the United States, and with sanctions threatened, both Britain and France, greatly mortified, agreed to withdraw their forces. George Ball, who spoke to the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet after the incident, said that the emotionally wrought Mollet ‘unburdened himself and insisted that the Americans had incorrectly claimed to have been taken by surprise’.

 Ball, himself a volunteer campaigning for the Democratic  candidate Adlai Stevenson who lost to Eisenhower in the ’56 Elections, commented that ‘Ike was known for his good luck, and in the end history played into his hands….The Suez crisis gave Ike the chance to show he was in charge..as “your President” and not as a political candidate.’ However, being on the outside of the administration, Ball would not have known if Ike had deliberately allowed France and Britain to get into the imbroglio of Suez. (George Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, Memoirs, Norton, 1982.

Mollet said that Eden had informed the Under Secretary of State, Robert Murphy that the French and the British ‘might feel compelled to act’. Mollet maintained that the French would have gone ahead even in the face of American disapproval, had not   the emotionally wrought prime minister of Britain ‘succumbed to a protracted sobbing spell’ and folded. Sick and broken, Eden abruptly left for Jamaica to recuperate in Ian Fleming’s hideaway, “Goldeneye”.

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