Far more than any other act, the nationalisation symbolised for Egyptians the liberation of the country from British imperialist influence. For the British government Nasser's actions symbolised something far more sinister. Nasser, a man who was likened to Hitler or Mussolini, had seized the jugular vein of the Empire.
If his grip was not loosened, economic strangulation and political eclipse threatened the nation. From the outset, all the leading members of Anthony Eden's Cabinet regarded Suez as an issue over which Britain should be prepared to go to war. Nasser's nationalist rhetoric, calling on the Arab world to reject British influence, seemed a direct threat to Britain's national interests.
Top of the list of such interests were concerns over access to Gulf oil resources. In the pre-supertanker era, the bulk of Britain's oil supply passed through the canal, and the future economic health of the nation seemed dependent on keeping it out of hostile hands. As Eden memorably told one official of Nasser: "It's either him or us; don't forget that. The main problem that confronted Eden's government was how to come up with a pretext both for reversing Nasser's nationalisation and ousting him from power.
From the outset it was clear that these twin goals could only be accomplished by a full-scale invasion of Egypt. In order to carry out such an operation, time was needed to assemble the appropriate forces. Here Suez paralleled the Falklands War. Negotiations had to be attempted in the meantime simply to fill the gap before military action. During August, September and October of , the government attempted a variety of diplomatic gambits, including an international conference and an appeal to the United Nations Security Council.
The principal goal behind all of these attempts was not so much to resolve the crisis as to draw the US administration of President Dwight D Eisenhower into supporting the British position. The difficulty here was that the diplomacy of Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was aimed in the opposite direction to that of Eden's government.
