The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 31 October in an attempt to depose Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal (which Nasser had nationalised earlier that year). The countries came under heavy political pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations, prompting their withdrawal from Egypt.
The crisis demonstrated that the United Kingdom and France could no longer implement independent foreign policies without U.S. consent. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to freely navigate the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957.
The crisis strengthened Nasser's standing, internationally humiliating the British (as historians questioned its role as a superpower) and the French during the Cold War. The UN established an emergency force to police the Egypt–Israel border. For his diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict through the UN, Canadian external-affairs minister Lester B. Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize. Analysts have said that the crisis may have emboldened the USSR, facilitating the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
Background
Before 1945
The Suez Canal opened in 1869, financed by the French and Egyptian governments. The canal was operated by the Suez Company, an Egyptian-chartered company; the area surrounding the canal remained Egyptian territory. The canal was strategically important, as it provided the shortest ocean link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
In 1875, as a result of a financial crisis, Egypt sold its shares in the company to the British government. They obtained a 44-percent share in the company for £4 million (equivalent to £399 million in 2025). With the 1882 invasion and occupation of Egypt, the UK took de facto control of the country and the canal. The 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection, and the Ottoman Empire agreed to permit international shipping to pass freely through the canal.
Despite the convention, Britain closed the canal several times. During the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War, the British denied the Russian Baltic Fleet use of the canal after the Dogger Bank incident and forced it to sail around Africa (giving the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces time to consolidate their position). During the First World War, Britain and France closed the canal to non-Allied shipping. During World War II, Britain stationed warships in the Suez Canal and used it to move Allied troops and military supplies, while neutral shipping was limited. In 1942, Axis forces advanced towards the Suez Canal, but Allied forces halted their offensive in July.
1945–1952
After World War II, Britain's Suez complex was one of the world's largest military installations. The base was an important part of Britain's strategic position in the Middle East, but became a source of growing tension in Anglo-Egyptian relations.
The canal's strategic importance for oil shipment continued after the war. Western Europe imported two million barrels daily from the Middle East: 1,200,000 by tanker through the canal, and another 800,000 via pipeline from the Persian Gulf (Trans-Arabian Pipeline) and Kirkuk (Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline) to the Mediterranean. The pipelines were prone to instability, and British leaders preferred the sea route through the canal.
Egypt's domestic politics were changing radically. Unrest began with the growth of radical political groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and an increasingly-hostile attitude towards Britain and its presence. Added to the anti-British fervour was the role Britain had played in the creation of Israel.
The Egyptian government unilaterally abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, whose terms gave Britain a lease on the Suez base for 20 more years, in October 1951. Britain refused to withdraw from Suez, relying on the treaty and its Suez garrison.
1952 Egyptian revolution
In January 1952, British forces tried to disarm an auxiliary-police barracks in Ismailia; 41 Egyptians died. This led to anti-Western riots in Cairo, resulting in property damage and the deaths of foreigners. This was a catalyst for the removal of the Egyptian monarchy. On 23 July 1952, a military coup by the Egyptian nationalist Free Officers movement led by Muhammad Neguib and Gamal Abdul Nasser overthrew King Farouk. After a brief regency under the infant Fuad II, the monarchy was replaced by the Republic of Egypt.
After the revolution
Egypt and the United States
American policy was torn between the desire to maintain good relations with NATO allies (such as Britain and France, major colonial powers) and aligning Third World nationalists such as Nasser, who resented British and French influence, with the Free World. The Eisenhower administration saw the Near East as a gap into which Soviet influence could project, which required an American-supported NATO-type organisation (the Middle East Treaty Organization, or METO). The CIA offered Nasser $3 million if he would join the defence organization; Nasser took the money, but did not join.
John Foster Dulles told Eisenhower in May 1953 that the Arab states believed that the United States would back Israel in expansion, and the prestige of Western democracy in the Middle East was low. The consequence was a new policy of "even-handedness", where the United States publicly sided with the Arab states in disputes with Israel and Britain from 1953 to 1955. Nasser wanted the United States to supply Egypt with arms, but his anti-Zionism made it difficult for the Eisenhower administration to obtain Congressional approval for weapons sales.
Egypt and Britain
Britain's desire to mend Anglo-Egyptian relations in the wake of the coup led to an attempt at rapprochement in 1953-54. In October 1954, Britain and Egypt concluded the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement on the phased evacuation of British troops from the Suez base. Great Britain would withdraw all troops within 20 months, maintain the base, and retain a right to return for seven years. The Suez Company would revert to the Egyptian government in 1968.
Baghdad Pact
Under Nasser, Egypt saw the Middle East as Egypt's sphere of influence and opposed Western security initiatives in the region. Nasser and Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Said vied for Arab leadership. The 1955 Baghdad Pact (later the Central Treaty Organization), an anti-Communist alliance of Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and the UK, seemed to confirm Nasser's fears that Britain was trying to draw the eastern Arab World into a bloc centred on Iraq. The pact was almost simultaneous with 28 February 1955 Israeli reprisal operations on the Gaza Strip during the Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency.
The closeness of the two events was mistakenly interpreted by Nasser as part of a coordinated Western effort to push him into joining the Baghdad Pact. The signing of the pact and the Gaza raid were the beginning of the end of Nasser's good relations with the U.S. In 1955 and 1956, he pursued policies which would frustrate British aims in the Middle East and result in increasing hostility between Britain and Egypt. Nasser also began to align Egypt with Saudi Arabia, whose rulers were hereditary enemies of the Hashemites, in an effort to frustrate British efforts to draw Syria, Jordan and Lebanon into the Baghdad Pact.
Egypt and the communist world
Nasser first broached the subject of buying weapons from the Soviet Union in 1954 to encourage the Americans into selling him arms. Instead of siding with either superpower, Nasser tried to have them compete for his friendship. During secret talks with the Soviets in 1955, his demands for weapons were granted. The September news of the Egyptian purchase of a large quantity of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia was seen by the West as an increase in Soviet influence in the Near East. In Britain, increasing Soviet influence was seen as a threat to British influence in the region.
Egypt and Israel
Before 1955, Nasser pursued peace efforts with Israel and worked to prevent cross-border Palestinian attacks. After the February 1955 Israeli raid on Egyptian Army headquarters in Gaza in retaliation for a Palestinian fedayeen attack which killed an Israeli civilian, Nasser began allowing raids into Israel by Palestinian militants. Egypt established fedayeen bases in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon. The raids triggered a series of Israeli reprisal operations.
Israel wanted to occupy and annex the Gaza Strip and the Sinai and control the Gulf of Aqaba. The Israelis were concerned about Egypt's procurement of large amounts of Soviet weaponry, which altered an already-shaky balance of power. Israel believed that it had a narrow window of opportunity to hit Egypt's army, and believed that Egypt had a secret alliance with Jordan and Syria.
Egypt and France
France and Israel were allied against Egypt, partially due to Egyptian support of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) rebels against the French. The French saw Nasser as a major threat. By early 1955, France was shipping large amounts of weapons to Israel and, by 1956, agreed to disregard the Tripartite Declaration and supply more weapons to Israel. In 1956, Israeli director general of defence Shimon Peres told the French that Israel had decided upon war with Egypt that year. Peres described Nasser as a genocidal maniac intent on destroying Israel and exterminating its people; Israel wanted a war before Egypt received more Soviet weapons, when an Israeli victory was still possible.
Egyptian policies in 1956
In January 1956, to end an arms race between Egypt (armed by the Soviet Union) and Israel (armed by France) which he saw as opening the Near East to Soviet influence, Eisenhower launched an effort to make peace between Egypt and Israel. He sent his friend Robert B. Anderson, who offered American aid in exchange for a peace treaty with Israel, as a secret envoy. Nasser and Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion had conflicting demands, and the meetings were unsuccessful.
A second round of secret diplomacy by Anderson in February 1956 was equally unsuccessful. It is unclear if Nasser was interested in peace or saying what the Americans wanted to hear in the hope of obtaining American funding for the Aswan High Dam and American weapons. British historian P. J. Vatikitos said that Nasser's determination to promote Egypt as the world's foremost anti-Zionist state to reinforce his claim to Arab leadership meant that peace was unlikely.
Nasser sponsored demonstrations in Amman which led King Hussein of Jordan to dismiss the British Commander of the Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb (known to the Arabs as Glubb Pasha), in March 1956. After Glubb was sacked, British prime minister Anthony Eden developed an antipathy against Nasser and was privately committed to his removal. A British politician recalled,
For Eden ... this was the last straw.... This reverse, he insisted was Nasser's doing. ... Nasser was our Enemy No. 1 in the Middle East and he would not rest until he destroyed all our friends and eliminated the last vestiges of our influence. ... Nasser must therefore be ... destroyed.
American historian Donald Neff wrote that Eden's hysterical, overwrought views of Nasser reflected the amphetamines to which he became addicted after a botched operation in 1953 and sustained sleep deprivation; Eden slept an average of about five hours per night in early 1956. Nasser recognised the People's Republic of China on 16 May 1956, which angered the U.S. and Secretary Dulles. This move, and his impression that the project was beyond Egypt's economic capabilities, caused Eisenhower to withdraw American financial aid for the Aswan Dam project on 19 July.
Nationalisation of the Suez Canal
In a 26 July 1956 speech in Alexandria, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the canal; he used the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the canal, as a code word ordering Egyptian forces to seize control of the canal. Egypt closed the canal (and the Straits of Tiran) to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba in contravention of the 1888 Convention of Constantinople; it was also said to violate the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Egyptian historian Abd al-Azim Ramadan cited Nasser's decision to nationalise the canal without political consultation as an example of his predilection for solitary decision-making.
British response
The nationalisation surprised Britain and the Commonwealth; there had been no discussion of the canal at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London in late June and early July. Egypt's action threatened British economic and military interests in the region.
Prime Minister Eden was under domestic pressure from Conservative MPs who compared the events of 1956 with those of the Munich Agreement in 1938. Since the US government did not support the British protests, the British government decided in favour of military intervention against Egypt to keep oil flowing and avoid the collapse of British influence in the region.