Sarah Ingham: The lessons of Suez paint an unexpected political picture

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

A narrow waterway in the Middle East. Vital for global trade, especially for transporting oil, it is threatened with closure.  A global power needs to take military action to reassert control, with Israel playing a key role … Not Iran 2026, but Suez 1956.

The Suez Crisis of 70 years ago humiliated Britain.

The post-Second World War comfort blanket of great power status was ripped away. The recent global hegemon with the largest Empire in history, the country finally realised it had been usurped by the United States.

Linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal cuts through Egypt. Like the Strait of Hormuz, it is a major strategic artery. Until July 1956, the Suez Canal Company, backed by the French and British governments, ran the waterway. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s charismatic leader, nationalised it and took control of the Canal.

Denouncing Nasser as a “Muslim Mussolini”, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was determined to take it back and overthrow the Egyptian leader. British tonnage accounted for 28 per cent of the traffic using the waterway: two-thirds of oils imports came via it. He declared: “The industrial life of Western Europe literally depends upon the continuing free navigation of the Canal.”

While military plans were drawn up in mid-August, nothing was done until early November. Newsreels of British warships sailing for the eastern Mediterranean and the call-up of 20,000 reservists escalated the sense of crisis. Weeks, then months, passed. The military plan to re-take the Canal was constantly revised and public backing waned.  In contrast, across the Arab world, there was huge support for Nasser.

Meanwhile, it was business-as-usual for the Canal under new Egyptian management.  An enterprising MP Frank Bowles visited twice, stating in October he  found “no difficulty at all about transit north or south.”

The British case for taking military action against Egypt became increasingly flimsy.

It would be neither legal nor legitimate. It went ahead anyway, but only after a pretext for intervention was secretly cooked up between the governments of Britain, France and Israel. This involved Israeli forces invading Egypt on 29 October, with the other two nations stepping in to “separate the belligerents”. Even 70 years on, the chicanery defies belief.

Operation Musketeer can be judged a military success. It was also, however, a political disaster.

Fearing the intervention would lead to closer alignment between Egypt and other Arab nations with Moscow, the Eisenhower administration in Washington led international condemnation. In the UN General Assembly, nation after nation demanded a ceasefire.

The US used Britain’s financial weakness as leverage.  The British asked for a loan – or rather, yet another post-1945 bail-out – which Washington refused until a ceasefire was agreed. The US also threatened to sell its sterling reserves, offering the unpalatable prospect of the pound devaluing and possible bankruptcy.

Operation Musketeer had provoked what it had intended to avert: the closure of the Canal. Soldiers returned home to a country polarised by Suez, with petrol rationing and, in January 1957, PM Eden’s resignation.

Britain’s prestige was irrevocably harmed. Suez 1956 highlighted that the country was a second rank power and that any future British military operation would need US support. Iran 2026 reflects Britain’s strategic incoherence and weakness in defence capability.

One lesson was learned by Musketeer’s commander, General Sir Charles Keightley: “World public opinion is a most important weapon of war.” It is doubtful that the Trump administration considered this ahead of Operation Epic Fury.

If Labour believes that opposing controversial military action brings political success at home, Suez is a warning. By rights, the Conservatives should have been punished for the botched misadventure, but in the 1959 General Election, Eden’s successor Harold Macmillan won with a landslide majority.

Is the Starmer government betting that American forces get bested by Iran, ensuring the Trump administration is forced into a Suez-like humiliating retreat? It is the only explanation for its strategic shortsightedness in jeopardising Britain’s “Rolls Royce of allies” status.

The UK is arguably more dependent on Washington today than it was 70 years ago. Back then, Britain’s defence sector was credible: Armed Forces’ strength was 804,000 personnel in 1955. Since then, like NATO’s other European members, we have mostly outsourced defence to the Pentagon.

The US was Britain’s largest export market in 2024, accounting for £210 billion, or 22 per cent of exports. American LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) was perhaps 15 per cent of this country’s total gas supply last year. Opponents of Epic Fury could always boycott US firms, such as Google and Meta.

Despite the PM’s overwrought claims, the US did not expect the UK to “join the war”, merely give permission to use two air bases. Washington had leverage in 1956, it has leverage today.

While Britain has let down allies across the Gulf who have been loyal customers of UK defence companies, France has sent its Forces to the region, as President Macron showcases French defence capability on X.

Just like Suez, seven decades later Iran is revealing the reality of Britain’s place in the world.