ABSTRACT
The Suez crisis of 1956 was the culmination of a long and drawn out dispute, which had a disastrous impact on the UK's world profile, power and reputation. Given the nature of the Suez crisis, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) should have played an integral part. Despite a general unease over the nature of Soviet involvement in the Middle East, communism was not seen by the JIC, initially at least, to be a significant factor in Egyptian politics. For the JIC, the information provided, together with the public knowledge of Nasser's privatisation of the Canal, was extremely worrying. In January 1955, the JIC examined how the Soviet Union might conduct a full-scale war in the Middle East. The Committee did, however, address what Patrick Dean described as a 'concerning' number of 'unconfirmed reports' of Soviet military reinforcements in the region. The revised view emphasised that the actions of the West would have a direct bearing on Soviet decision making.
