Suez in 1956 and Iran in 2026 – are there any parallels?
This week, I watched a television documentary on the Suez crisis of 1956, a period that I knew too little about as I was only eight years old at the time. In this crisis, Britain and France, together with Israel, concluded that Nasser’s acquisition of the Suez Canal represented some kind of existential threat. They wanted to seize control of the waterway but also to affect regime change.
It set me thinking: are there some parallels between what happened then and what is currently happening in the attack by the United States and Israel on Iran? I see three similarities.
First, the Suez fiasco represented a turning point in British politics and global affairs, since it made clear that Britain was no longer a major world power, resulting in a significant scaling back of its aspirations and diminution of its standing. In the same way, the current stalemate between the US and Iran may come to be seen as recognition that America is not all-powerful and cannot always achieve its objectives by military force alone.
Second, the British and the French expected their intervention to so reduce Nasser’s hold on power that he would be overthrown. It didn’t happen; indeed Nasser emerged as a stronger figure both at home and in the Arab world. Similarly, the Americans and Israelis appeared to be convinced that wiping out the theocratic and military leadership of Iran would lead to an uprising and regime change. Again, this hasn’t happened; the country has proved far more resilient to attack that was imagined.
Third, the assault on the Suez Canal would never have happened if Israel had not concluded a secret deal with Britain and France and made the first military incursion into Egypt. It way well be that the most recent bombing of Iran by the US was provoked by Israelis’ determination, whatever the Americans thought, to take out the previous leadership of Iran at a time they viewed as propitious, since their intelligence identified a meeting of so many of the leaders in one place at the same time.
The Iran crisis is far from over, but already – comparing it to Suez – perhaps several lessons have been reinforced:
- the claim of an existential threat should not be made lightly and needs to be supported by clear evidence
- great powers should not allow smaller powers to push them into military action which is not thought-through and likely to be decisive
- the resilience of authoritarian regimes should not be underestimated and military power alone may be insufficient to to dislodge them.