The Other Side of Suez (BBC Documentary)

"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 Britian 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." - Narrator

(not available for purchase legally)

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 and

embarked on a strategy of regime change.

Of how Britain deliberately bypassed the United Nations

and of how a power 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 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. "MI-6 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, two hundred
thousand people gathered 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. "They have

their radio on to follow the speech

waiting for the password "De Lesseps."

When they hear this word, their president
has told them to storm the offices of

the Suez Canal Company.

{Segment from speech}

As jubilant Egyptians celebrate,

Nasser heads to a movie theater to relax.
He doesn't know that in London,

Anthony Eden has already decided to have
him killed.

Egypt - cradle of ancient civilizations

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. "Reconsider

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 give
your nothing.

He take everything and give 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 small Cheshire and not a, 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 Minister's

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

eighty-eight thousand soldiers from the
biggest base in the world,

on the banks of the Suez Canal. "At that
time,

what was most important is real independence

and to get free, really free, by

evacuating the troops." "There was an
operation

against the British troops prior to
the negotiations.

When the negotiations go in a smooth
way,

we ease the resistance. When

the British delegation became
stubborn,

we intensify the resistance."

By the spring of 1956,

Egypt is free of British troops. With
his country moving away from its

colonial past,

Nasser 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 seventy-five percent of the
fortune.

"We had one of the lowest standards life,

the majority of Egyptians were in
streets with

naked feet."

Nasser'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 four hundred million
dollars 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 revolution 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.

"As 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."

{Explosions}

Nassar faught 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 the time a great

danger and enemy. Very soon, it was clear
that he aspires

to the unify the Arab world." "Nasser

made great speeches. He was handsome, he

was eloquent. He carried fire with him,

there was a catastrophe."

The Israelis see themselves surrounded
by enemies,

fearing attack, they are desperately
trolling the world for arms.

"The Americans were very strict, they wouldn't supply us arms,

so did Great Britain, and I thought

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 the situation that may distract 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 revolution, asks 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 on 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.

Nasser knows that if Washington says no

then maybe Nikita Khrushchev in
Moscow will say yes.

"Egypt flexes its military muscles with
the display of arms newly acquired from

Russia and its satellites."

The first arms from the Soviet bloc

land in Alexandria on the 27th of
September,

1955. The deal as 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's willing to wait. Egypt was
the first great success for him.

This was for Khrushchev a sign.

The kind of relationship he could have
with many of the large states in

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. "Nasser has
never been a Communist, never, never

at all." "We are believer. 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.

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 Nasser,

code-named Omega. "Omega includes
propaganda

to provide information to journalists, to
broadcasters,

that say, "Nasser really isn't a very good
person, can you please report this?"

"Omega also includes sanctions against
Egypt. It includes

locking 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 US 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 him.

In London, Eden's mistrust of Nasser 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 Nasser is a
pawn of the Soviet Union

and the Egyptian people will welcome his
overthrow. "From reading the reports in MI6

is giving to British officials and
giving to the Americans,

I think they're taking a few sources and
their 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 assinated, because that was

not true, that simply was not true."

But "Lucky Break" is telling the British
Prime Minister

what he wants to hear them. The firm attitude that the
government have adopted is not (quote fades)

Foreign Office Minister Anthony Nutting

is one of the first to realize 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 our conversation

and ended up by shouting at me, 'I don't
want Nasser neutralized, I want him

destroyed'."

There were two-two people [unintelligible] in conversation:

Eden and Nutting. Nutting said subsequently that Eden had said murder.

Operatives within MI6

take the Prime Minister at his word. "What
you have is Thomas of Becket situation

were Eden 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 Nasser.

From the West, either French

or British, or Israelis, nearly every month.

As Nasser was making a public speech in
Alexandria,

a young man fired eight bullets at him.
All missed the Premier, but two of his aids

were wounded.

"The plans just are are wildly out of
control,

putting nerve gas into the ventilation
system of

Nasser's headquarters, trying to put poison
into Nasser's coffee,

trying at some point to possibly shoot
Nasser.

If Lucky Break did not exist in 1956, he would
have had to be created

to justify their extravagant plans to
get rid of Nasser.

On the 19th of July, 1956, the Egyptian
ambassador to the USA

is called into the state department. He is
informed that the financing up 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 insultive attitude

which the refusal was declared,

not by the refusal itself, but the

insultive attitude and- which
meant humiliation. Now

Nasser has two choices, he can meekly except
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 on the
Suez Canal.

And he told me 'what about nationalizing this canal?'"

I got surprised

but internally

in myself, I got proud to think about

this action at that time.

I felt proud."

Nasser calculates that the Aswan dam
can still be built,

if the tolls have ships transiting the
Suez Canal come to Egypt

and not the British and French
controlled Suez Canal Company.

But Nasser 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.

The reaction of Egyptians was 'Oh, that
he hasn't got the balls

to really stand up to the United States. But
afterwards

Nasser orders an old military colleague,
Mahmoud Eunice,

to mastermind the dangerous job taking
physical control of the canal.

Eunice selects 30 man he can trust.

Eunice emphasized that, if

this peace of news

is released then

it will surely

not succeed. Three days later,

Nasser is scheduled to speak publicly
again. The men know their queue 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 combination

of first, fear,

and of course the sense of

responsibility. This

is tremendous.

In the stifling July heat, Nasser makes his
way to Alexandria's Mansheya 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 catalogs the centuries of
humiliations the Egyptians have suffered

at the hands of the West.

It is an attitude of such arrogance towards other peoples. We will not be manipulated.

His tone is measured but angry.

Today we are going to get rid of what happened in the past.

On the canal, Esset and his men are in
position,

ready for the signal, but after two hours,

it still hasn't come.

"Every year the Company earn 35 million pounds sterling. This money should be ours.

Then the moment of truth

"I imagined I had seen Ferdinand De Lesseps."

At the signal, Eunice, Esset and their
men, simultaneously break into the

four main offices ot 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, Eunice
informs the European employees that the

company has been nationalized.

He is polite,

but he is also armed. Attempts sabotage
or obstruction by the employees

will not be tolerated. "They were very

astonished and afraid.

We tried to calmed them down and

asked them to continue work

as if nothing has happened."

Back in Alexandria, Nasser now reveals to
the world

what the employees at the Suez Canal
Company have just discovered.

"Some of your fellow citizens have just taken over the Canal." Across Egypt, there is pandemonium. "It was a.

bombshell, of course, absolute bombshell. We
listen to this thing

nobody expected." "People were rioting

in the street.

I celebrated with all Egyptians."

The Suez Canal Company shall be nationalized. All Company assets shall be transferred to the state. The Company is under new management.

The employees at the newly nationalized
company

do not join in the celebrations. "I
remember that

some of them said, 'You do not

to realize the impact

and the reactions from the West.

Because the West cannot leave

this international waterway

in incapable hands.

In London,

Eden is enjoying post-dinner brandys
with military and diplomatic top brass

at No. 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." The former commanding
officer

of our battalion described, 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 me Eden down. Dulles carries with him
a letter from the President.

"The letter said that, under no circumstances,
within

American public opinion or the 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 the explicitly that the
government had decided that they were

going to get rid of Nasser,

that this is the only alternative, that
there was a firm decision, they were

going to change it,

and that was that."

"Essentially, the British and French reaction

to the Suez Crisis, captivated
two principles,

about which we have heard quite a lot
recently.

One was regime change, feeling that Nasser must go.

The other was preemptive

self-defense. Eden's justification for
this

is the belief that Nasser is a Soviet
puppet, a direct threat

to British interests. Lucky Break's
intelligence has told him so.

But the intelligence is wrong. In moscow,

Nikita Kruschev knows nothing of Nasser's
plans.

"When he nationalized the canal, 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, as 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 Edan does not expect
the Egyptians will be able to run the

canal.

Critical to its running, are the three
hundred pilots,

nearly all European, who guide each ship
from one end to the other.

"Without these pilots, the traffic will

will never start, canal will stop."

"We noticed that after

the summer leave is over, some

did not come back. We also notice

that some are selling their cars."

"In fourteenth of September,

at twelve 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 failed, then soon,

then soon the Suez Canal would 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 bank's

blocking the whole canal and proving
Eden right.

"The feeling of responsibility makes me losing
some confidence.

I couldn't see the buoys. You see the
green boys and red buoys.

I couldn't see any.

But by time, they [unintelligible], 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, relax.

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 look by the glass, and found him,
Mahmoud Younis 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 gave the confidence

to the Egyptian state 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 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 pilot's have 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 [unintelligible].

Exhausted, the 36 Egyptian pilots

and whatever foreign recruits they can
muster, work 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 expect, at all, that

Egypt would succeed in this severe

exam. And some of the Western

papers sugguested 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 Aiden'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 Defence

arrive to see a gloomy Prime Minister
at his country retreat,

Checkers. "The French had invented the
following

senario, that Israel should attack

Egypt. There upon, Britain and France, who

had forces in the neighborhood, 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 says, 'You ever thought about 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

Nassar's downfall.

"To bomb Egypt, you

create panic within the country, you link
this

to an invasion - Israeli invasion, and
the new government will emerge

and Nasser 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 going
well.

"He desperately hoped 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 Pireau, the French Foreign Minister,
was very ambiguous.

From the beginning, he seemed to be
prepared

to get down to real negotiations, but
then halfway through,

he seemed to lose interest intirely 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 Blix thought that he
could do with a couple more months

of time to decide something very definite
about the weapons of mass destruction

but Eden wasn't having any of it."

Eden has another agenda and instructs
Lloyd and Logan to travel,

in secret, to a Parisian suburb called
Se,

to finalize the plot with the French and
Israelis.

Lloyd was desperately disappointed, but felt,

out of loyalty, that 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 Sev 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 No. 10 and his immediate reaction

was, 'Oh my god, I never expected it to be signed'." When this document finally emerged,

forty years later, it confirmed how a
British Prime Minister

had deceived the world and deliberately
engineered a war

in the Middle East.

On October the 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 take that he
was surprised

and not surprised. We were predicting

that there would be an action against Egypt, 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 kilometers from the canal or
45 kilometers.

But when you look at big maps then you can say

the drop was not far from the canal. There
was enough to fulfill 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 Sev,
Israel and Egypt are to cease fighting

or the two Western powers will intervene.
Eden knows

this is an ultimatum that Nasser cannot
accept.

On the evening of the 30th of October,
the ultimatum expires.

Shortly afterwards, Nasser hears planes in
the skies above Cairo.

"I was with the Indonesian ambassador and there
were 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 hadn't thought at all that Britain would do

any attack against us because it was clear

that any attack against us would effect

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

rush 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're gonna
do because our training was very cursory.

It included one clip of live ammunition.
When we joined,

first thing they did was they give us
those cases of Kalashnikov rifles

right out of the boxes with Greece,
and they said, 'Okay, here is your rifle.'"

This makeshift civilian army

now waits for the arrival of British
paratroopers.

"You hear a lot of fire, people flying

rifles and firing in the air. We don't-

you know, everybody is a parachutist, you know.
Any noise you think somebody had just

come from sky. So it was a very very

tense moment and we were scared."

But Cairo, where Talaat Badrawi and
other volunteers are waiting

is not the target for the British
paratroopers 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.

So of course we wanted to wipe them
out."

"All the people have

arms and guns and machine guns. They shoot at the airplanes

and every Egyptian people are ready to
sacrifice himself

in order to- 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 a man of peace.

Working for peace, striving for peace,

negotiating for peace

and I'm still the same, with the same
conviction,

same diversion to peace.

But I'm utterly

convinced the action we have taken is
right."

As Eden is speaking,

Port Said is burning.

"There were two streets

I'm Abbas Street and Adadi

Street. These were mainly slums of wooden huts.

So they shot powder

at this homes and they were all set
ablaze. One would see so many

homes burned, from the start to the end
of the street.

This 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 Nasser. "They do
not understand what Egypt

is. They were completely wrong. The
Egyptians were- all of them- were

where at one heart behind Nasser."

"When they feel a foreign threat,

people come together and that's what 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 ports."

"We were hiding

arms all over the villages, everywhere in
Egypt;

So even if the troops, they
came to invade Egypt, we will fight- we

will resist."

And to prevent the British taking the
canal,

Nassar orders ships to be sunk and the
canal blocked.

Eden's invasion has succeeded in
obstructing the very waterway

is trying to save and that is in 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."

2,000 kilometers 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

where ever found." Nikita Kruschev

sees his ally Nasser coming under attack
in Cairo

and realizes 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 that 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.

His reaction was the reaction of
political leader

who is fearful, surprised, and

angry at the same time. Kruschev

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 to them that no, Soviet Union is as

powerful as ever.

You cannot mess with me, either in the
Middle East

or in Eastern Europe." Then

Kruschev 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 consequences 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 of
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.

"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, he was really angry with the
British. they'd 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 is
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 that they can even begin to restore that 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,

moral in Port Said soars. "People
around the world we're 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,

where 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 would stay

at cafes, listening to the radio, encouraging people 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 Azar mosque.

"We will fight from house to house, from village to village. We will fight and never surrender.

We will fight rather than live humiliated. We will fight to the last drop of blood. We're building our country, our history, 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 over 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's was quite firm, he said as soon as you agree to get out

and really are getting out, we willl 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 10 miles down the canal,

the Prime Minister reluctantly calls a
cease-fire. If the United Nations will take over

this police action,

we shall welcome, indeed we prefer

that cause 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 cease-fire is a humiliating
climbdown for Eden

and his commanders. "I have to say

that most of the offices in the regiment

took it as a mortal blow. I think it was

very, very hard all professional soldiers
who'd gone into this

enterprise in good faith, thought that
this was going to be the final

roar of the British lion and suddenly found it
it was just a sort of a

mingy little squeak that 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. So anthony, at the moment of departure may we ask you how you're feeling?"

"The main 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 twenty years

to recover our rightful position as someone
who was not

lord and master in that area, but a
friend

to those states which will emerge after
many centuries when we and the French

had ruled the roost." In Egypt,

the Suez Crisis was the making of Nasser.
"The 23rd of December,

1956 [unintelligible].

It was the first day of the liberation of Port Said

and the whole city was out to celebrate victory."

"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 fated 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 hero,

who was sent by god

to retrieve the Arabs from

many years of subordination." "Nasser,

in a sense, was a big winner but with a
win which set him up

to be an awfully big loser because Nasser
eventually came to believe his own

propaganda that

he had won a great battle." A little over 10
years later,

Nasser 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 catastrophic
retreat, line Nasser'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 at 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 at
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 fight for 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 cuts out a third way

for Arab Nationalism.

The very factors which lead the Americans
keep their distance

from Britain's in moving to aggressively
against Nasser 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 now wait on a bench
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 wil,l 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 fifty years later.

But where as 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 terroism.

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 Suez
Crisis, you know.

Which is after all, it's only fifty years
ago and they

could have learned that this will never happen, it will
never happen.

You know, people will defend the country
they would defend their land."

"I am a human being, I have dignity. I don't

except any foreigner to dominate me or
at else,

I am a slave. Right or wrong?"