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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.