Thank you. This is a story of how the government of the United Kingdom decided to attack an Arab nation. Of how, afraid its oil supplies were under threat, it embarked on a strategy of regime change.
Of how Britain deliberately bypassed the United Nations. And of how a British Prime Minister led the nation to war based on suspect intelligence. But this isn't Iraq 2003. This is Egypt, 1956. These are British paratroopers fighting on the orders of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden.
He has gambled on a war in a desperate bid to destroy Egypt's new young president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. I'm utterly convinced that the action we have... taken is right. This is a war over who will run this Egyptian waterway, the Suez Canal, and the vital oil supplies which are transported through it.
Suez is a crisis which will push the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. That moment I did think this is really going to be the third world war. In Britain, we know Suez is a war based on a prime minister's lie.
A lie which destroys him. MI6 sexed up their intelligence. But seen from the other side, Suez is a story of how a small, poor Arab country defended itself against the Western world and won. People will defend their country, they will defend their land. July the 26th, 1956. It is a warm evening as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser prepares to address his people.
His country is in ferment. Only seven days before, the young president had suffered a humiliating blow when the West sabotaged his key plan to lift Egypt out of poverty. Now, 200,000 people gather to hear their president's response. But unknown to the crowd, 30 people stationed on the banks of the Suez Canal are listening for a password, a Frenchman's name hidden in Nasser's speech.
Have their radio on to follow the speech, waiting for the password, Deliseps. When they hear this word, their president has told them to storm the offices of the Suez Canal company. Where our friend, Mr. Ferdinand Deliseps, is.
As jubilant Egyptians celebrate, Nasser heads to a movie theatre to relax. He doesn't know that in London, Anthony Eden has already decided to have him killed. Egypt.
Cradle of ancient civilisations, and in the post-war era, strategically the most valuable country in the Arab world. Thanks to this, the Suez Canal, which carries oil to the economies of the West. The company that runs the canal is largely owned by Egypt's old colonial masters, Britain and France, and is staffed by Europeans.
We consider the Suez Canal company is a country inside our country, a state inside our state. Egypt sees virtually nothing of the tens of millions of dollars the canal earns each year. Feelings of resentment are growing.
Imagine somebody, a foreigner in your country, and he gives you nothing. He takes everything and gives you nothing. Is that justice? In February 1955, Egypt's young president Gamal Abdel Nasser meets British Prime Minister Anthony Eden for the first time.
The two men dislike one another from the start. The impression of President Nasser about Anthony Eden was that he was a small churcher, you know. Committed with imposing the British point of view on the other side.
For Eden, Egypt remains part of Britain's sphere of influence in the Middle East. Although nominally independent since 1922, Egyptian kings have dutifully ...done what British Prime Ministers have told them to do. Eden lived in the legend of the Empire, but the world was different. Eden didn't realize the change in the balance of power.
Anthony Eden is every inch the Conservative Prime Minister. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he was Foreign Secretary during the war and is Winston Churchill's hand-picked successor. But in Nasser, Eden encounters a new kind of Arab leader. He is part of a new generation of Egyptians determined to secure real independence for their country. Nasser is one of a group of officers who had overthrown the playboy King Farouk in 1952. Two years later, Nasser had shown Britain that Egypt would not be pushed around.
An aggressive guerrilla campaign forces the British to evacuate. to evacuate 88,000 soldiers from the biggest base in the world on the banks of the Suez Canal. At that time, what was most important was real independence and to get free, really free.
by evacuating the troops. There was an operation against the British troops parallel to the negotiations. When the negotiations go in a smooth way, we ease the resistance. When the British delegation became stubborn, we intensified the resistance. By the spring of 1956, Egypt is free of British troops.
With his country moving away from its colonial past, NASA embarks on an ambitious plan to transform the lives of his people. Egypt was very much backward. Half percent of the people were possessing nearly about 75% of their fortune. We had one of the lowest standards of life. The majority of Egyptians were in streets with naked feet.
NASA's solution is to build a huge dam on the Nile at Aswan, which will provide water for agriculture and electricity. It will be the biggest dam in the world and will lift Egypt out of poverty once and for all. This project of the high dam will provide Egypt with water to double the farms and will give power, electricity to industrialize Egypt. But Nasser needs $400 million to realize his dream, an enormous sum in the 1950s. His first port of call is the West.
In the beginning, Nasser and all the revolutionaries have no problem with the Americans. On the contrary, we can get help of the Americans. The World Bank, backed by the United States and Britain, agrees to give him a loan. At this point, Nasser's relations with the Americans seem close.
Nasser's favorite film is It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. He really loves that film. And Washington arranges to send out a special copy of the film with Arabic subtitles. By 1956, Egypt's glamorous young president is confident his plans to develop Egypt are on course. But Nasser has another problem, which will destroy his plans.
The sporadic fighting takes on the proportions of full-scale war. Dead and captured arms are the order of the day, as both Arabs and Israelis put their nations on a full mobilization basis. Nasser fought in the Arab armies defeated by the Israelis in 1948. Since then, the Middle East's newest state has fought a border war with its Arab neighbors.
Israel's very existence is an affront to Nasser. Nasser was at that time a great danger and enemy. Very soon it was clear that he aspires to be the unifier of the Arab world.
Nasser made great speeches. He was handsome, he was eloquent. He carried fire with him. It was a catastrophe. The Israelis see themselves surrounded by enemies.
Fearing attack, they are desperately trawling the world for arms. The Americans were very strict. They wouldn't supply us arms.
So did Great Britain. And I thought that the only opening we have is France. France agrees to supply Israel with the Jewish state's first jet fighters.
To Nasser, it looks like an increasingly powerful enemy is at the gates. The French are giving Israel arms. I am confronting a situation that may destruct my country. Should I stand still?
So Nasser decides he too will look abroad for arms. As with the loan for his dam, His first call is on the United States. Nasser, from the first day of the revolution, asked the Americans, I need arms, our army needs arms.
And he asked the British the same question. Neither the British nor the Americans gave a response to that. But this is the 1950s, the depths of the Cold War.
The West and the Soviet Union are locked in a battle for influence across the world. NASA knows that if Washington says no, then maybe Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow will say yes. Egypt flexes its military muscles with a display of arms newly acquired from Russia and its satellites.
The first arms from the Soviet bloc land in Alexandria on 27 September 1955. The deal is a triumph for Khrushchev, who is keen to extend communist influence in the region. He didn't expect that countries would be communist immediately. He was willing to wait.
Egypt was the first great success for him. This was for Khrushchev a sign of the kind of relationship he could have with many of the large states in the developing world. And for the West, this was a very dramatic achievement.
But Nasser is not in Khrushchev's pocket, as many in the West fear. No, Nasser has never been a communist, never, never, at all. We are believers. I am a believer.
I believe in God. Nasser used to believe in God. Nasser used to pray.
The communists don't believe in God. They don't play. Nasser was an anti-communist. The Soviets knew full well he was an anti-communist.
They knew that he was putting communists in jail. He didn't let those communists out of jail when his relations improved with the Soviet Union. But both sides made a pragmatic decision. But in Eden's view, Nasser does look like a communist stooge. The Prime Minister and the Americans decide to punish him for cutting a deal with the Soviets.
Their response is to mount a covert campaign against NASA, codenamed Omega. Omega includes propaganda that provide information to journalists, to broadcasters, that say NASA really isn't a very good person, can you please report this? Omega also includes sanctions against Egypt. It includes blocking military aid to Egypt. Then, as part of this undeclared war, a secret decision is taken to slow down financing on the Aswan Dam.
Anthony Eden and the U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, are behind the new strategy. I think Dulles was angry with Nasser for having almost flaunted his independence.
I really think that Dulles believed that Nasser's behavior was almost a personal affront to him. In London, Eden's mistrust of NASA is increased by some mysterious intelligence reports which have just landed on his desk. They are from an MI6 contact known as Lucky Break.
Lucky Break tells Eden that NASA is a pawn of the Soviet Union and the Egyptian people will welcome his overthrow. From reading the reports that MI6 is giving to British officials. ...and giving to the Americans, I think they are taking a few sources and they are sexing them up. No one individual could have provided the information that Nasser was so close to the Soviets, that Nasser was so vulnerable to being overthrown if not assassinated, because that was not true. That simply was not true.
But lucky break is telling the British Prime Minister what he wants to hear. The firm attitude that the government have adopted is not a... Foreign Office Minister Anthony Nutting is one of the first to realise just how far the Prime Minister is now... prepared to go. Over an open line, having just said, it's me, we started a violent argument on the telephone and he was really violent in that conversation and ended up by shouting at me, I don't want Nasser neutralized, I want him destroyed.
There were two people involved in the conversation, Eden and Nati. Nati said subsequently that Eden had said murder. Operatives within MI6 take the Prime Minister at his word. What you have is a Thomas Beckett situation where he even says, will someone not make me rid of this turbulent Nasser?
I'm not exaggerating. Nearly every month, nearly every month, there was an attempt against NASA from the West. Either French or British or Israelis.
Nearly every month. As NASA was making a public speech in Alexandria, a young man fired eight bullets at him. All missed the premier, but two of his aides were wounded. The planes just are wildly out of control, putting nerve gas into the ventilation system. ...of Nassar's headquarters, trying to put poison into Nassar's coffee, trying at some point to possibly shoot Nassar.
If Lucky Break did not exist in 1956, he would have had to be created to justify their extravagant plans to get rid of Nassar. On the 19th of July 1956, the Egyptian ambassador to the USA is called into the State Department. He is informed that the financing of the Aswan Dam is cancelled. If the West can't assassinate Nasser, then they will destroy his dreams to develop Egypt. To add insult to injury, President Nasser only learns of the decision from the radio news.
I was surprised by the insult. Attitude which the refusal was declared. Not by the refusal itself, but the insult of attitude and which meant humiliation. Now Nasser has two choices.
He can meekly accept the West's punishment, or he can fight. Three days later, he gathers his most trusted lieutenants together. President Nasser ordered me to bring him the file of the Suez Canal.
And he told me, what about nationalizing the canal? I got surprised first time. But internally, in myself, I got proud to think about this action at that time.
I felt proud. NASA calculates that the Aswan Dam can still be built if the tolls of ships transiting the Suez Canal come to Egypt and not the British and French-controlled Suez Canal Company. But NASA knows that nationalization is a huge risk.
He will have to physically seize control of the canal itself. The next day he is scheduled to make his first speech since his humiliation at the hands of the West. All Egypt waits for his response.
The speech is an anti-climax. It was all rhetoric, and the reaction of the Egyptians was, oh, he hasn't got the balls to really stand up to the United States. But afterwards, Nasser orders an old military colleague, Mahmoud Yunus, to mastermind the dangerous job of taking physical control of the canal.
Yunus selects 30 men he can trust. UNICEF emphasized that if this piece of news is released, then it will surely not succeed. Three days later, Nasser is scheduled to speak publicly again.
The men know their cue for action is a password hidden in the president's speech, which will be carried on Egyptian radio. The password is the name of the man who designed the canal. Ferdinand de Lesseps.
As they wait, they still don't know if their president has definitely decided to take the gamble. My feelings were a combination of, first, fear, and, of course, the sense of responsibility. is tremendous. In the stifling July heat, Nasser makes his way to Alexandria's Manshia Square, where he is to deliver his speech. Once again, his people wait to hear if he will respond to the West's denial of funding for the Aswan Dam.
At 9pm, Nasser climbs the podium. The speech is long. Nasser catalogues the centuries of humiliations the Egyptians have suffered at the hands of the West. His tone is measured, but angry. On the canal, Ezzat and his men are in position, ready for the signal.
But after two hours, it still hasn't come. Then, the moment of truth. At the signal, Yunis, Ezat and their men simultaneously break into the four main offices of the Suez Canal Company. In Alexandria, Nasser leaves nothing to chance.
He repeats the password a total of 14 times. In the Canal Company headquarters, Yunis informs the European employees that the company has been nationalized. He is polite.
but he is also armed. Attempts at sabotage or obstruction by the employees will not be tolerated. They were very astonished and afraid.
We tried to calm them down and we asked them to continue work as if nothing has happened. Back in Alexandria, NASA now reveals to the world what the employees of the Suez Canal Company have just discovered. Across Egypt, there is pandemonium. It was a bombshell, of course, absolute bombshell. We listened to this thing, nobody expected it.
People were rejoicing in the street. I celebrated with all Egyptians. The employees of the newly nationalized company do not join in the celebrations. I remember that some of them said that you do not realize the impact and the reactions from the West because the West cannot leave this international waterway in unkeepable hands.
In London, Eden is enjoying post-dinner brandies with military and diplomatic top brass at number 10. When news of Nasser's actions comes through, he is furious. We all know this is how fascist governments behave. And we all remember only too well what the cost can be in giving in to fascism. A former commanding officer of our battalion described it in his usual blunt way to me.
He said that the moment you mentioned the name Nasser, Eden practically got down and chewed the carpet. But in the United States, initial reaction is less belligerent. Eisenhower dispatches John Foster Dulles to London to calm Eden down. Dulles carries with him a letter from the President. The letter said that under no circumstances would an American public opinion or American government support use of force in the Middle East.
But Eden has already made his decision. The next morning, Eisenhower had a cable from Eden. Stating explicitly that the government had decided that they were going to get rid of Nasser, that this was the only alternative, that it was a firm decision, they weren't going to change it, and that was that. Essentially, the British and French reaction to the Suez Crisis encapsulated two principles about which we have heard quite a lot recently. One was regime change, the feeling that NASA was gone.
The other was pre-emptive self-defence. Eden's justification for this is the belief that NASA is a Soviet puppet, a direct threat to British interests. Lucky Brake's intelligence has told him so. But the intelligence is wrong. In Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev knows nothing of NASA's plans.
When he nationalized, it was a surprise for the Soviet Union also. He didn't take their permission or anything. Even once he had made this decision, a few days before the announcement, he didn't tell the Soviets. And he didn't tell them for an obvious reason.
He knew what their reaction would be. Moscow would tell him, don't do it. The West saw. Moscow, as the ginger man in the story, is provoking Nasser to be more and more aggressive.
In fact, Moscow was doing the opposite. Meanwhile, in the newly nationalized canal, the atmosphere is tense. Nasser knows that Eden does not expect the Egyptians will be able to run the canal.
Critical to its running are the 300 pilots, nearly all European, who guide each ship from one end to the other. Now with these pilots... The traffic will never start.
The canal will stop. We noticed that after the summer leave is over, some did not come back. We also noticed that some are selling their cars, their furniture.
On the 14th of September, at 12 o'clock, they declared, we stop work. Seven weeks after nationalization, the British Prime Minister has secretly instructed the pilots to abandon the canal. It was now an exam in which if we fail, then also the Suez Canal will be lost.
Egypt's hopes rest on the shoulders of the 26-year-old trainee pilot Ali Nasri, who, with only a fortnight's training, has to take a ship through the canal. My first vessel was... German and the captain came and say you are from the new pilots I said yes and this is my first time I have to take a ship alone. The potential for disaster is huge the canal is little over a hundred meters wide at points Ali Nasri fears a miscalculation could send his tanker into the banks blocking the whole canal and proving Eden right. The feeling of responsibility makes me Losing some confidence.
I couldn't see the boys. You see the green boys and the red boys. I couldn't see any.
But by time, the encouraging of the master, and they start to give orders. Slowly, his ship moves off down the canal. My orders I executed immediately.
You keep the vessel in the middle, straight. So I start to feel happy, relaxed. I can see the way the vessel was moving.
So I start to feel easy, easy. Nasri's progress is followed with baited... breath on the banks of the canal.
I saw somebody in the road, somebody calling pilot, pilot. Yes, I looked by the glass, I found him, engineer Eunice by himself, the chairman, standing in the road saying, good luck, go ahead. 14 hours later, a ship piloted by an Egyptian has passed successfully through the canal. Once again, there are celebrations in the streets. It is beyond any imagination that gives the confidence to the Egyptians that they can do what the whole world thought that they cannot.
But in London, Eden is still determined to build a case for intervention. Removing the pilots is only his opening gambit. Now he decides to overwhelm the inexperienced Egyptians by forcing a gigantic fleet of tankers through the canal.
Now the British had planned a nice little scheme which would demonstrate to the world the Egyptians were incompetent at running the canal. And they would have lots of ships just poised and ready to go through the canal once the pilots had been withdrawn. Then instead of receiving, say, 20 vessels at Port Said, you receive 30. To make it more difficult for any group to carry on as pilots. Exhausted, the 36 Egyptian pilots and whatever foreign recruits they can muster worked day and night to deny Eden his wish and to keep the canal running. We were working continuously.
President Nasser at that time was on the phone, on the wireless, hour by hour. The Egyptians succeed in keeping the canal open, despite Eden's best efforts at sabotage. For a second time, the Prime Minister has been foiled. The whole world was not expecting at all.
that Egypt would succeed in this severe exam. And some of the Western papers suggested that the Egyptians cultivate the Suez Canal area with potatoes instead of running the Suez Canal. Eden is frustrated, but Nasser feels vindicated. It is now almost three months since nationalization, and the canal is still open for business.
It seems Eden's plans to overthrow Nasser and wrestle back control of the canal have failed. The world can see no reason for war. Then, on the 14th of October, two visitors from the French Ministry of Defense arrived to see a gloomy Prime Minister at his country retreat, Chequers. The French had invented the following scenario. That Israel should attack Egypt.
Thereupon, Britain and France, who had forces in the neighbourhood, should say, we cannot allow this kind of war because it will interfere with the Suez Canal and therefore we are going to intervene and hold the two countries apart. I happened... to be in Paris. So the Minister of Defense called me in and he says, did you ever thought storming over Sinai?
And that's how it started. Eden is enthusiastic about this French plan. Not only will he be able to seize the canal, he sees a way to bring about NASA's downfall.
You bomb Egypt, you create panic within the country, you link this to an invasion, Israeli invasion, and the new government will emerge, and NASA will be no more. As Eden is plotting in Britain, the rest of the world is trying to broker a peace deal at the United Nations. Eden has reluctantly sent his foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, to meet with the French and Egyptians in New York. To Lloyd's surprise, the talks are over.
going well. He desperately hoped that he would be able to make real progress in these talks in the United Nations and was encouraged by the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Fawzi's, willingness to talk over the subject. But just as it seems progress is being made, the atmosphere changes. The attitude of Pinault, the French foreign minister, was very ambiguous. From the beginning, he seemed to be prepared to get down to real negotiation.
But then, halfway through, he seemed to lose interest entirely, and we wondered what was going on. And why? Eden, anxious that no deal is struck in New York, telephones Lloyd and orders him to abandon the talks immediately.
The Foreign Secretary, feeling he might be close to a solution, is exasperated. Selwyn Lloyd probably thought that it was worthwhile continuing with these discussions. You might say, like Hans Blick thought, that he could do with a couple more months of time to decide something very definite about weapons of mass destruction.
But Eden wasn't having any. Eden has another agenda and instructs Lloyd and Logan to travel in secret to a Parisian suburb called Sevre To finalize the plot with the French and Israelis. Lloyd was desperately disappointed But felt out of loyalty he had to do it But it turned his stomach to do it and he hated it all the way through The document agreed on here, known as the Sèvres Protocol, puts down in black and white the covert plan to invade Egypt and fool the world. At the end, copies of the protocol are presented for signatures.
Patrick Dean, a foreign office official, signs on behalf of the British. But Eden does not expect his desire for war to be confirmed in writing. We returned late that night and took the document to him in number 10. And his immediate reaction was, Oh my God, I never expected anything to be signed. When this document finally emerged 40 years later, it confirmed how a British Prime Minister had deceived the world and deliberately engineered a war in the Middle East.
On October 29th, the Israelis land a parachute brigade deep in the Sinai, as agreed at Sev. Nasser is awoken at 4am and told the news. You can tell that he was surprised and not surprised. We were predicting that there would be an action against the Egyptians. But we have no information from Israel.
But the Israeli advance towards the canal is a fake, designed purely to convince the world that the canal is threatened. It was about 40 kilometres from the canal, or 45 kilometres, but when you look at big maps, then you can say, ah, the drop was not far from the canal. That was enough to fulfil the needs of the British to say, the canal is threatened.
We didn't go into the motives and consideration of France and England, because our aims were clear. The Israeli forces concentrate instead on destroying the Egyptian army in Sinai, which they have long seen as a threat to Israel's security. The attack takes Nasser's commanders by surprise. They are quickly overwhelmed and forced to retreat. The following day, Britain and France issue their ultimatum, as planned at Sevres.
Israel and Egypt are to cease fighting, or the two Western powers will intervene. Eden knows this is an ultimatum that NASA cannot accept. On the evening of the 30th of October, the ultimatum expires. Shortly afterwards, NASA hears planes in the skies above Cairo.
The Indonesian ambassador and there was the air warning. And then came the blackout. I listened and there was the jet airplanes.
And I said to the Indonesian ambassador, these are British. Now, Nasser realizes just how much Eden is prepared to gamble. I haven't thought at all that Britain would do any attack against us, because it was clear that any attack against us would affect the British position all over the Arab countries and would mean the end of the British relations and influence in the Middle East. As the bombs fall, a frightened Egyptian population rushed to join civilian militias.
Most of us, the young people, decided that we're going to defend the country. We really didn't know what we were going to do because our training was very cursory. It included one clip of live ammunition. When we joined, the first thing they did was they gave us those cases of Kalashnikov rifles right out of the boxes with grease. And they said, OK, here is your rifle, you know.
This makeshift civilian army now waits for the arrival of British paratroopers. You hear a lot of fire, people firing rifles and firing in the air. We didn't know what, you know, everybody is a parachutist, you know.
Any noise, you think somebody had just come from the sky. So it was a very, very tense moment and we were... We were scared. But Cairo, where Talat Badrawi and other volunteers are waiting, is not the target for the British paratroop assault.
Port Said, at the mouth of the canal, is where Britain will begin the reconquest of Egypt. After five days of aerial bombardment, 668 British paratroopers land in Port Said. The city quickly finds itself under occupation, but its population is determined not to give Eden the easy victory he has anticipated.
And then they landed. The British landed in Port Said. Of course we wanted to wipe them out. All the people have arms and guns and machine guns.
They shoot at the aeroplanes. And every Egyptian people are ready to sacrifice himself in order to defend his country. As the resistance mobilizes, the British Prime Minister is insisting to the world that his actions are right, legal and morally sound.
All my life I've been a man of peace. Working for peace. Striving for peace. Negotiating for peace.
And I'm still the same man. With the same conviction. The same devotion to peace.
But I'm utterly convinced that the action we have taken is right. As Eden is speaking, Port Said is burning. There were two streets, Aba Street and Abadi Street.
These were mainly slums of wooden huts. So they shot powder at these homes. and they were all set ablaze. One could see so many homes burned from the start to the end of the street.
These homes were all burned. I saw corpses down the streets that nobody could bury. And they brought small wagons, usually used to sell vegetables, and put six or seven corpses on every wagon to take them to the graveyard in order to be buried there. And I saw two corpses which were flattened to the ground all together. They were crushed by tanks.
The war is barely a week old. Hundreds of Egyptian civilians have already been killed in the bombing campaign and more die in the street fighting that follows. It is at this point that Eden hopes a terrified Egyptian population will rise up to overthrow NASA. They do not understand what Egypt is.
They were completely wrong. The Egyptians were, all of them, were one heart behind Nasser. And they feel a foreign threat, the people come together. And this not happened, exactly.
The Egyptian armed forces may be hopelessly outgunned, but Nasser and his government remain in Cairo. Plans are made to begin a guerrilla war should the army be overwhelmed. A popular army to fight in the canals, in the streets, in the countryside, in the port. We were hiding arms all over the villages. everywhere in Egypt, so that even if the troops, they came to invade Egypt, we will fight, we will resist.
And to prevent the British taking the canal, NASA orders ships to be sunk and the canal blocked. Eden's invasion has succeeded in obstructing the very waterway he is trying to save. And that isn't the Prime Minister's only miscalculation. The Suez Crisis suddenly increases the temperature of the Cold War.
Burning buildings and bitter street fighting signal the release of long pent-up resentment. Two thousand kilometres away, in Budapest, the Soviet Union's empire in Europe is threatened by a popular uprising. The Red Star has been ripped. The hated symbol of communism is effaced wherever found. Nikita Khrushchev sees his ally NASA coming under attack in Cairo and realises that Soviet prestige appears to be crumbling on two continents.
He feels. That the West is taking advantage of him when he is down. That the British and the French are watching his troubles in Eastern Europe and see that they have an opportunity to deal with one of his allies now because he is distracted.
And his reaction was the reaction of a political leader who is fearful, surprised and angry at the same time. Khrushchev uses the city of Budapest to send a bloody message to the West, as recent research has uncovered. We have the Politburo minutes, and it makes clear what's going on here.
He wants to send a signal then that, no, the Soviet Union is as powerful as ever. You cannot mess with me either in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe. Then, Khrushchev ups the stakes.
Lacking conventional forces in the Middle East to help Egypt against the British and French, he threatens the West with the doomsday option. He said to the world that, don't be surprised if the consequence of your actions is that nuclear weapons will fall on London and Paris. This was the first time they had ever made a nuclear threat. Suddenly, it looks like Eden's adventure in Egypt is going to end in Armageddon. Somebody had a radio.
and we heard on that that the Russians were threatening to drop bombs on London and the Chinese might be about to join in too. And that moment I did think this is really going to be the Third World War. The threat of nuclear war concentrates minds in Washington.
where President Eisenhower is already furious with the Prime Minister. The United States was not consulted in any way about any phase of these actions, nor were we informed of them in advance. He was so angry with the British. I mean, it was really angry with the British. They had gone around his back and colluded with these other guys.
In front of the world, the American Secretary of State condemns his country's oldest ally. I doubt that any delegate ever spoke from this forum with as heavy a heart as I have brought. Here tonight. Eden had the awful realization that he had totally misjudged the American aspect of the affair. Eden's plans are unraveling fast.
He has not anticipated this level of hostility from the Americans, nor from his own people. If he is sincere in what he is saying, then he is too stupid to be a prime minister. There was demonstrations in London as big as demonstrations in Egypt.
And there is only one way in which they can even begin to restore their tarnished reputation, and that is to get out, get out, get out! The world sees photographs which show in grisly detail the effects of the war on the Egyptian people, as opposition across the world mounts. Morale in Port Said soars. People around the world were backing you. In the West, we had the public opinion with Egyptians.
And Eden realizes he has fatally miscalculated the reaction of the Egyptian population to invasion. If you ask me, were they afraid? Yes, we were all afraid. Because nobody likes to die. We used to live a daily natural life.
But with little commodities, limited food. But people could stay in cafes, listen to the radio, encouraging you to resist. Very special atmosphere. Nasser refuses to go into hiding.
He determines instead to rally his people after Friday prayers at Cairo's ancient Al-Azhar Mosque. We build our history. We build our future. In London, Eden is feeling the strain.
He has failed to win the hearts and minds of the Egyptian people. Nasser is more popular than ever. And now comes the decisive blow.
Britain's currency reserves have been hemorrhaging since the bombing campaign began, as dealers all over the world dump sterling. In those days, Britain was the banker of the sterling area. Britain saw immediate danger of the bottom falling out of that. When Eden appeals to the Americans for financial help, President Eisenhower makes sure there will be no room for misunderstanding this time. Eisenhower was quite firm.
He said, as soon as you agree to get out, and you really are getting out, we will help you, but not a minute before. On the 6th of November, after nine days of war, Eden has no choice. With British troops having advanced little over ten miles down the canal, the Prime Minister reluctantly calls a ceasefire. If the United Nations will take over this police action, we shall welcome it.
Indeed, we propose that course to them. The arrival of United Nations contingents at Port Said causes a sensation that nearly develops into a riot by excitable Egyptians. Of course, I was jumping with joy. When the last British soldier left, we used to say, go to hell. Plans are made for United Nations troops to replace the British and French on the ground.
The ceasefire is a humiliating climb down for Eden and his commanders. I have to say that most of the officers in the regiment took it as a mortal blow. I think it was very, very hard on the professional soldiers who had gone into this enterprise in good faith, thought that this was going to be the final roar of the British line, and suddenly found that it was just a sort of mingy little squeak that had achieved nothing. For the Prime Minister, the pressure of failure is unbearable. With Britain facing a winter fuel crisis because of the closure of the canal, he leaves the country for Jamaica, his health and career crumbling.
Sir Anthony, at the moment of departure, may we ask you how you are feeling? The only thing I'm feeling is that I'm deeply sorry to have to leave the country at this time. Five weeks later, he is back, but not for long.
Eden never returned to frontline politics, and his reputation never recovered from taking Britain to war in the Middle East under false pretenses. Britain's reputation was equally damaged. Well, it was a total utter... Disaster. And it took us 20 years to recover our rightful position as someone who was not the lord and master in that area, but a friend to those states which had emerged after many centuries when we and the French had ruled the roost.
In Egypt, the Suez Crisis was the making of NASA. The 23rd of December, 1956 dawned beautifully. It was the first day after the liberation of Fort Sire and the whole city was out to celebrate Victory Day. At that time he was, you know, he was God, I have to tell you. President Nasser is a historic hero.
In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Nasser was feted all over the Arab world. Here at last was a leader who could stand up to the West and win. And the Arabs at that time started to realize that Nasser was the...
the hero who was sent by God to retrieve the Arabs from many years of subordination. Nasser in a sense was a big winner, but it was a win. which set him up to be an awfully big loser, because NASA eventually came to believe his own propaganda that he had won a great battle. A little over ten years later, NASA decides that he is strong enough to settle old scores with... the Israeli invaders of 1956. In 1967 he said, last time we were fighting Israel, Britain and France.
We won then. This time Israel is alone. It is an appalling misjudgment.
In the Sinai desert, in the wake of Egypt's catastrophic retreat, Lainasa's wrecked tanks. The whole world hopes that from great victory and utter defeat, wisdom will emerge and bring lasting peace to this part of the world. But instead of peace coming to the Middle East, the unresolved issues of the 1967 war, the West Bank and Gaza Strip still poison the region today.
The end of the Suez Crisis was also the moment a new power decided to take center stage in the Middle East. Within weeks of the end of the war, President Eisenhower, convinced that the British and French could no longer be trusted to protect Western interests in the region, announces a fateful change in American policy. He concludes that what the Middle East needs... is more American involvement, not less.
The Eisenhower Doctrine said we're going to safeguard any country which is threatened by communism within the Middle East. That's the old idea of you're either with us in Washington or with us in Moscow, and that cuts out a third way for Arab nationalism. The very factors which led the Americans to keep their distance from Britain and moving too aggressively against NASA in 1956, they lose sight of those. The occasion has come for us to show our deep respect for the rights and independence of every nation, however great, however small.
We seek not violence, but peace. It is a policy which echoes from Suez to today. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this House to give a lead. To show that we will stand up for what we know to be right.
To show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. The fact of the matter is that Iraq could turn out in the long run to be a Suez 50 years later. But whereas that will take years to find out with Iraq, with Suez we found it out within a matter of weeks. Ordinary Egyptians have drawn their own lessons from the Suez crisis.
There is a great difference between resistance and terrorism. I was a patriot defending my country. The spirit of resistance is deeply rooted in our country and in the area.
When the US and Britain went into Iraq, with the idea of being accepted with open arms and so on, that was a very stupid idea. I mean, where did they ever come up with that idea? I don't know. They could have looked at the history books, they could have looked at the source crisis, you know, which is after all it's only 50 years ago. And they could have learned that this will never happen.
It will never happen. You know, people will defend their country, they will defend their land. I am a human being, I have dignity.
I don't accept any foreigner to dominate me. Or else, I am a slave. Right or wrong? And on Sunday, it's Suez Night on BBC Parliament.
Tonight, brand new BBC4 creepy drama, The Haunted Airman, is next.