During the period from 1952 to 1967, Gamal Abd al-Nasser embodied what the Arab world wanted to be: assertive, independent, and immersed in constructing a new society freed from the imperial past and oriented toward a bright Arab future. The coup—or the revolution of 1952, as it came to be called—was planned by a group of junior military officers, many of whom had known one another since the early 1940s. Once the officers assumed power, they formed themselves into a Nasser-led organization called the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) that served as the government's executive body. The RCC's main rival for power was the Muslim Brotherhood, which was far and away Egypt's most popular political organization. Egypt's search for financial assistance to develop its agricultural base provides further background to the Suez crisis. After the coup d'etat of 1952, Egyptian economic planners resurrected a long-standing scheme to construct a second dam across the Nile at Aswan.