ABSTRACT
THE SUEZ OPERATION was the culmination of 18 months of growing tension between the British and the Egyptian governments. The hopes that had been nurtured by the Anglo-Egyptian agreement proved to be a mirage. The essential cause of the crisis was the determination of the new British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, to maintain Britain’s paramount role in the Arab circle through the Baghdad Pact, and Egyptian President Nasser’s determination to pursue a policy of neutralism and opposition to all Western attempts to retain regional hegemony, which, depending on your viewpoint, blocked Egypt’s, or his own, ambitions for Arab leadership. Eden decided that Iraq, Britain’s closest ally in the Middle East, should be the Arab power that Britain should base its Middle Eastern defence policy around. Britain had long sought a revision of its 1930 alliance with Iraq, but a 1948 agreement caused riots in Baghdad. The United States for some time had been seeking regional defence co-operation of the Northern Tier of states in the Near East (Turkey, Iraq, Persia and Pakistan). Obstacles to such a plan were removed in late 1954. Anglo-Egyptian relations were moving towards what seemed more friendly waters. Nuri al-Said, the proBritish Iraqi statesman, became Prime Minister once more in August and began consultations with Turkey’s leader, Adnan Menderes. The British appear to have seen the wider scheme for a Middle Eastern alliance as allowing them ‘a political umbrella’ under which they would be able to secure revision of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty.1
