Thomas Small Aimen, could you please tell me your precise location and where you're going to be for the next three or four days? A guy with a funny accent called earlier and asked me if I knew.
Aimen Dean Really?
Thomas Small No. Okay. This joke doesn't work. I want it to sound like – like an assassin is trying to find out where you are.
Aimen Dean Yeah. For me, like, you know, "Oh, really?" Like, you know, because what happened is you're not the first one. Some associate, like, you know, was calling and was saying, like, "We know who you associate with." Like, you know, I mean, "Tell him his days are numbered." You know? And—. Yeah.
Thomas Small Oh, my God. Well, you're still alive. That's what matters.
Aimen Dean Yeah. You know, the guy ended up being picked up by the UK services. It turns out like, you know, he—. You know, he's just—. And his [unintelligible] is from Blackburn. No. Oldham. Sorry. Oldham, which is near Blackburn.
Thomas Small Let's get into it.
Aimen, I realised the other day that, in our last episode, I was so excited to tell the story of Mohammad Mosaddegh that I forgot to address the clash of civilisations' dimension of the episode. This season is supposed to be about the clash of civilisations and does that help us understand modern Middle Eastern history at all.
Maybe we can quickly talk about that to kind of see how we are so far in the series. 'In the last episode, we explored Iran's painful experience of modernisation—first by being caught between two large European empires, the British and the Russian, and then by being an early Cold War ideological epicentre. This has been Iran's experience over the modern period, and it's not so different from what most Muslim countries have gone through for the past two centuries, really.
So, Aimen, what do you think? Is there a clash of civilisations going on here? Is Western modernity essentially incompatible with the Islamic tradition? And so, are Muslims today burdened with a sort of civilisational split personality?
Aimen Dean Well, again, we come back to "How do we define civilisation here?" If you mean by modernity—you know, modern equipments, modern education, modern science—I don't think there is any clash. The clash comes with modern values.
Thomas Small Sure. But are they separable? Modern values informed modern technological development, didn't they? Values like individualism, scepticism, rationalism. It's by these values that Western scientists and engineers built up the modern world.
Aimen Dean Look at Japan. They shed some of their antiquated systems of governance and they got rid of some of the antiquated ways of running their society, but they kept their tradition, and they were able to industrialise without being too westernised.
However, I think in the current, I would say, geopolitical, socioeconomic atmosphere of the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, the clash was not always with science, technology, engineering, as well as the ideas of free market and individualism, because these are Islamic values. Islam is as capitalistic as it could be. It is the problem with Islam generally being always socially conservative, as well as fiscally conservative. You know, there is a room for scientific experimentation. There is a room for scepticism. There is a room for research and development. The problem comes with the social norms being, you know, more or less shaken and challenged.
Thomas Small Well, you know, you and I have argued about this a lot over our steak dinners and over our phone calls. Can one separate entirely the ethos of the West from its scientific and technological development?
I mean, you mentioned Japan. I can't speak for the Japanese, but I, sometimes, wonder, you know, "Are the Japanese, you know, burdened with a sort of civilisational split personality as well?" I'm not – I'm not entirely sure they aren't. I don't know.
That's what this series is about. We want to explore these questions while we tell a fascinating story of modern Middle Eastern history. And today, we're pivoting from Iran in the Cold War to Egypt in the Cold War. Specifically, we want to tell the story of the Suez Crisis of 1956, the event that, perhaps more than any other, signalled the changing of the guard from the old European colonial empires to the new American one.
The Cold War connection between Iran and Egypt is actually closer than you might think, Aimen. As we discussed in the last episode, in 1953, the CIA worked together with Iranian power players to launch Operation Ajax, a coup that overthrew Mosaddegh. Well, Aimen, have you ever heard of—I promise you this is the name—Project Fat Fucker?
Aimen Dean What? Fat what?
Thomas Small Project Fat Fucker.
Aimen Dean No. No. You're joking. Yeah? You know. You're just pulling my …
Thomas Small No.
Aimen Dean … pulling my leg here.
Thomas Small No. The year before Operation Ajax, in 1952, the CIA did the exact same thing, but in Egypt. They worked with disaffected Egyptian army officers to overthrow the king of Egypt, King Farouk. And due to the king's corpulence, the CIA codenamed the operation "Project Fat Fucker."
It's – it's weird that people don't know about this. Maybe because we're cool with it when the CIA overthrows kings, but – but not elected prime ministers. I don’t know.
Aimen Dean Poor Farouk. Like, you know, I mean, he had so many bad things happen to him in life. Like, you know, just to add insult to injury.
Thomas Small Anyway, more on that later. First, Egypt in general. Egypt. Um al-Dunya. The Mother of the World, Aimen. In a book published in 1997, the author wrote, "Egypt has been and continues to be the most important Arab country."
That was written in 1997. Aimen, would that sentence be written today?
Aimen Dean First of all, I don't know, Thomas, if it is accurate or not. And we're going to discuss this throughout the episode, but all I want to tell you is that Egypt is my favourite country in the Middle East.
Thomas Small Really?
Aimen Dean It is—. First of all, it is the place where I love to go for holidays. It is a place where I love to go for a break. It is, you know, my love. Especially, you know, Alexandria. I love going to Alexandria and just marvel …
Thomas Small Wow, that's excellent and—.
Aimen Dean … in its cultural, you know, scene. Its food, its atmosphere. The vibe. The northern shores just to the west of Alexandria all the way to Mersa Matruh has one of the bluest beaches in the world, the whitest sand you could ever imagine. It's—. Yeah.
Thomas Small It's so funny that you say that, Aimen, because, you know, when I first went to Egypt, I couldn't wait to go to Alexandria, because I was – I was imagining, you know—. I had a romantic notion of what Alexandria was based on books I've read, based on, you know, stories that you hear about Alexandria and about the Greeks and the Italians, and about the elegant architecture, and about Alexander the Great, and about the famous library. I just had this idea of what Alexandria would be. And when I arrived—and this was in the early noughties—I was totally disappointed, because it – it seemed like—.
Aimen Dean Not well looked after, I would say.
Thomas Small It was not well looked after. It—. The glories I was expecting to see were – were definitely gone.
Aimen Dean You should visit again, because there is a renaissance happening there.
Thomas Small Wow. Okay. Well, I will. But that – that kind of gets to the point that I'm trying to say, you know, 'cause Egypt—.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small I mean, has – has Egypt not been in decline, in some cultural sense at least, from its heyday in the – in the first half of the twentieth century when it really was a glittering, glittering place? You know, all eyes were on Egypt. All of Africa, not just the Middle East, looked to Cairo as a sort of cultural capital.
Thomas Small Do you know why it's in decline? Again, because what we said before in season one, monarchies. Monarchies tend to look after countries better than, well, you know, militaries or autocratic dictatorships. So, the CIA did really fuck up Egypt when they – when – when they removed the Fat Fucker from power. I think the Fat Fucker was the CIA here. I think.
Thomas Small Egypt has been a distinct geographical unit—a distinct nation, really—for over five thousand years. The first Egyptian dynasty is dated to 3150 BC. This is impossibly old. So many dynasties. So many capital cities all built along the banks of the Nile, which is always shifting and turning as it winds its way through the desert. So, they always had them build new capitals. Thebes, Memphis, Tanis, Alexandria, Fustat, and, of course, Cairo. All of these capitals, all up and down the Nile River, the Nile Delta.
And in fact, that history continues, because, right now, east of present-day Cairo, between it and the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government is building yet another new capital. They announced it in March 2015. All government agencies will be relocated to this new capital. The plans that they've drawn up are unimaginably large.
Aimen Dean Well, guess what. It is actually becoming a reality. If you look at the new satellite imagery, if you look at the new documentaries, if you look at the planning, goodness, it is really becoming a reality. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine from Egypt, and he was telling me, "You know what? You can come and buy, you know, apartments and shops or whatever. You can invest."
And I said to him, "Well, actually it is not out of the question. Egypt is a up and coming economic power." Definitely, Egypt is experiencing a economic revival at the moment.
Thomas Small You could say that Egypt is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, which is ironic, given the fact that this renaissance is causing it to enter into conflict with an African country up the Nile, Ethiopia and its grand Ethiopian renaissance Dam.
Ethiopia is building a massive dam, which Egypt opposes. Last August, in fact, Sisi (President Sisi, the president of Egypt) said that all options were on the table to oppose this dam, including the military option, should Egypt's water supply be in any way compromised by this policy of building a dam by Ethiopia. Ethiopia is damming the blue Nile. The Nile River starts in Ethiopia, the mountains of Ethiopia. And that gives the Ethiopians this tremendous sort of leverage over both Sudan and Egypt. If they screw up the waters of the Nile, that has a existential impact on Egypt. And President Sisi is not happy about it.
Aimen Dean Damn.
Thomas Small Oh, man.
Aimen Dean Do you remember? We talked before in the Yemen episode, in season one, about how the future conflicts of the Middle East are going to centre around water.
Thomas Small Mmhmm.
Aimen Dean Water is becoming more and more scarce commodity. And with food security threatened all over the world, you know, with this crazy, insane war between Russia and Ukraine, goodness, I don't know where we are heading. You know, water security, food security. Yeah.
Thomas Small Egypt is really in the firing line. Only around five percent of Egypt is habitable.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small The rest is brutal desert. And Egypt's huge population of over one hundred million people, they all live along the banks of the Nile.
This is very different from Ethiopia, which is extremely mountainous, comparatively very fertile, and is, as I said, the source of the rivers up and down northeast Africa. Ethiopia's population is even larger than Egypt's. It's now pushing a hundred and twenty million, and it's growing fast. But because of this population growth, Ethiopia needs to overcome an electricity shortfall. And the new dam that it's building would quadruple their electricity supplies. And to add sort of to the geopolitical intrigue, China is actually building the dam.
So, I don't know. Is this going to lead to war, Aimen? Ethiopia has already started filling the reservoir, and Egypt feels that it really has to delay this filling. And to that end, it's acquired new missiles. Might they even attack the dam?
Aimen Dean Well, look, we come back again to the politics of water and the geostrategic importance of water. When we talk about one hundred and five million in Egypt, we have to add another thirty, thirty-five million people in Sudan. And you know, this population combined (almost a hundred and fifty million people in Egypt and Sudan) are united in their opposite, you know, against this dam and the negative impact it's going to have on Egypt – Egypt.
The problem is, since the British influenced, you know, the khedive of Egypt at the time to switch many of the lands that were producing wheat and barley to producing cotton, Egypt, at the time, of course, with only a population of twenty million, said, "Okay." You know? "We already produce a surplus of wheat. We might as well switch to cotton," which is a very precious, you know, commodity at the time.
However, as Egypt's population exploded, there wasn't enough wheat, quantities of wheat, that needs to be imported to make bread, which is the main staple for Egyptian people. The quantity became a burden, an exceptionally a huge burden, on the Egyptians' finances to the point where, at any given time, the amount of wheat that Egypt can store is only enough for six months. And if there are any crisis in the supply of grains in the world, like what's going to happen over the next few weeks and months [crosstalk].
Thomas Small Yes. The Egypt government will be looking at the Ukrainian war …
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small … with a great trepidation, because most of its grain comes from the Ukraine. Is that right?
Aimen Dean Ukraine and Russia. And the problem is the Black Sea is a source of the grains. And at the moment, it's not so much just only there is a shortage of grain, but there is that sentiment gripping the suppliers and the major buyers. It means that the suppliers are holding onto their grains, because the price of grain is going to rise. And guess what. In February alone, the price of grains rose by thirteen percent per metric ton. Thirteen percent.
Thomas Small Things never change, really. I mean, all of modern Egyptian history—all of Egyptian history from the very beginning—has revolved around dams, wheat, and waterways, whether the river or the canal.
Now, we're going to start our brief precis, our brief summary of modern Egyptian history at the very beginning, in 1798, when French general, Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded. There is a lot we could say about Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, because the story is completely fascinating. It's one of those periods in history that is almost perfectly symbolic. I mean, Napoleon, the incarnation of modernity, of secularism, of faith in reason. So, the invasion overwhelms the imagination. If there is a clash of civilisations between the modern west and the Islamic world, Napoleon conquering Egypt personifies it.
Aimen Dean Remember, Thomas, that Napoleon's campaign in Egypt wasn't the first French attempt to conquer Egypt. I mean, Louis the IX.
Thomas Small Of course.
Aimen Dean You know, the French crusaders. But you see, all of these were called alhamalat alsalibia. You know, the crusader campaigns. However, the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt is not labelled as a crusade. I mean, no, they don't see it like this. The Egyptians always see it—both scholars and, you know, the average people—as the French campaign, because it was entirely French …
Thomas Small Yeah. Of course.
Aimen Dean … with French character, a French desire to challenge the might of the British in terms of trying to have Egypt as an access point from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and from there, to the Indian Ocean.
Thomas Small Far from being a crusade, Napoleon actually pretended to convert to Islam when he was in Egypt in order to get the Egyptian population on his side.
Aimen Dean Indeed. Mr. Muhammad Napoleon. I mean—.
Thomas Small 'Cause as you say—.
Aimen Dean But—. Yeah. He didn't fool them, though. He didn't fool them.
Thomas Small As you say, Napoleon did have geostrategic reasons for his invasion. France had lost most of its overseas possessions to Britain during the Seven Years' War a generation earlier, and Napoleon thought he could undermine Britain's control of India by establishing a French imperium in the Middle East.
He was also attracted by the memory of an ancient route connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, not over land, but via ship. The canal of the Pharaohs. The canal of the Pharaohs. There actually was, all that time ago, a canal connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean just as there is today. The Canal of the Pharaohs brings up ancient Egypt. And – and Napoleon brought with him French savants, who spread out across the country and uncovered all of the riches, the archaeological riches, of the Pharaonic period.
Before this, people's knowledge of ancient Egypt was – was really limited. Classical writers had told them that, you know, Egypt was impossibly old, that it had been conquered in 525 BC by our friends from the last episode, the Persians, and then by Alexander the Great two centuries later, who was crowned pharaoh, proclaimed the God, and ushered in three centuries of Greek rule. Then, the Romans grabbed Egypt—this is where the Antony and Cleopatra story comes in—and turned it into the bread basket of the Roman Empire, which it remained basically until your friends, Aimen, the Arabs, conquered it from the Byzantines in the 640s.
Egypt's medieval history was pretty well-known, too, since Egypt had remained a powerful cultural and economic centre and played a big role in the crusades, as you said. After the Muslim conquest, it took three or four centuries for Egypt to be fully Islam-ified. It was majority Christian until then. And it – it became the seat of power for a number of important Islamic dynasties (the Fatimids, the Ayyubids, the Mamluks) until it was conquered by the Ottomans and turned into the bread basket of their empire, which is how Napoleon found it.
Aimen Dean But remember something. Throughout all of this, throughout all of this, Egypt always was regarded as a fortress of Islam, because it not only was able to repel the crusades and the crusades attempts to conquer it, but also it stopped the Mongol invasion.
Thomas Small Yes. The Mamluks stopped the Mongols. Man, they were hard, hard warriors, weren't they?
Aimen Dean Well, I mean, they were slaves. They were. Mamluk means slaves. And they were slaves from two distinct regions in Asia. Well, Asia and Europe, if you can call it this way. The Mamluks who were brought from the steps of Asia. You know, they were from Kazakhstan and former Soviet republics. And then, you have the Mamluks who from the Caucasus. So, there were always these two, you know, rival factions within the Mamluks. They were slave soldiers who were then were promoted to, you know, high positions of power in the military.
Thomas Small Now, in addition to factual history, if you like, Egypt had almost a mythological status in the imaginations of both Christians and the Muslims, because Egypt plays a central role in both the Bible and the Qur'an. In the Bible at least—I can speak from experience—you know, Egypt is the ultimate symbol of – of this world as opposed to the next world, as opposed to the spiritual world. It's a symbol of the material world, of worldly wisdom, but also of corruption, sickness, delusion, and death. And it was lorded over by the pharaoh.
In the Bible, the Pharaoh is the archetypical tyrant, the man who believes he is God, the summit of idolatry. Pure egoistic, haughty, fallenness from which people need rescuing salvation. He's almost like a symbol of the devil. And in the Bible, God sends Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, which, certainly, early Christian fathers interpreted as the ultimate symbol of salvation, of redemption, of initiation into divine knowledge and virtue.
Is that pretty much how Egypt is – is understood symbolically by Islam and the Qur'an, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Oh, yes. I mean, Egypt symbolises materialism, rejection of the divine, and this obsession with building monuments. But are they monuments, you know, in order to better people's lives? No. They are monuments in order to celebrate death and afterlife only for the pharaohs and their close circles and for the high priests. So, it was almost like a death cult in a sense.
Thomas Small This is how it's remembered. I'm sure—.
Aimen Dean Exactly. Yeah.
Thomas Small I'm sure, you know, Egyptologists would say, "Hey. Hang on a minute. There was a lot more to Egyptian religion than that."
But what we're talking about is how it's remembered by Christians and – and Muslims, I mean. And – and, of course, in the end, Egypt was first utterly Christian-ified and then utterly Islam-ified. So, you know. But it remained nonetheless a symbol in the sacred scriptures of materialism, of death, of delusion, of idolatry.
Aimen Dean Yes. However, since it became Islam-ified, Egypt now, as always—oh, and even to this day—always being regarded as an Islamic fortress. It's the Citadel of Islam. Seriously. This is how it's been viewed by many, many Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East.
Thomas Small An Islamic Citadel, Egypt certainly was and continues to be. And yet, modernity arrived. And it arrived hard.
In the end, Napoleon's adventure in Egypt ended ignominiously. He fled by foot up – back to France and left his – his army behind to – to die there. Not really his greatest moment.
In the end, the Ottomans regained control. Sort of. The Ottomans sent an Albanian warlord, Muhammad Ali, to rule Egypt as their imperial governor, their viceroy.
The era or the Muhammad Ali dynasty. Well, it was during this era that the Suez Canal was built. It was opened in 1869. And building the canal had – had landed huge debts on the shoulders of the – of the Egyptian state, leading to increasing European intervention. They wanted their money back. The Europeans were forcing economic reforms threatened the Egyptian army's interests, because then, as now, the army owned a huge amount of the Egyptian economy.
So, the army actually revolted in 1882, and the French and British warships felt compelled to sail to Alexandria and shell the city. This provoked the Egyptian army even further, and nationalist army officers took control of the government. They actually began nationalising economic assets. This is in 1882. Very similar to the revolution that would happen seventy years later, in 1952.
To protect its interest in Egypt, Britain invaded, with French troops alongside, and quickly routed the Egyptian army. They never formally incorporated Egypt into the British Empire, but everyone knew who was in charge.
This history is fascinating, but I'm just going to quickly go through it. In 1919, there was a revolution, which led, in 1922, to formal recognition of Egyptian independence, although, you know, Britain still retained full military control of the Suez Canal Zone and exerted a lot of influence in the country.
It was in this period that Islamic modernism was born. You know, we've talked a lot about Deobandism and its influence on modern Islamist movements. Deobandism, remember, which was rooted in resistance to the British in India. And in the last episode, Aimen, you remember we discussed the Iranian thinker al-Afghani and his influence on – on the rise of Islamic modernism, on Islamism.
Al-Afghani called for modernisation and reform within an anti-Western Islamic paradigm, like Deobandism, and he would inspire perhaps the most important Egypt Islamist, Hassan al-Banna.
Aimen, Hassan al-Banna, he's your—. He's basically your idol, right? You love Hassan al-Banna.
Aimen Dean Are you trying to provoke me here, Thomas? Seriously?
Okay. Look, look, look, look. I mean, in all honestly, I did actually admire Hassan al-Banna when I was growing up, because his writings and, you know, the movement, actually, he founded was extremely influential as we have discussed many times before in Saudi Arabia. And when I grew up—.
Thomas Small And what was that movement, Aimen, just in case any listeners don't know?
Aimen Dean Well, the movement is called al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, which means the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thomas Small The Muslim Brotherhood.
Aimen Dean So, the Muslim Brotherhood were founded by Hassan al-Banna in the 1920s. And again, just like the Deobandis, you know, it was in opposition to the British control of not only economic and political life, but also cultural encroachments, you know, of what they called creeping Westernisation of Egypt.
Thomas Small Absolutely. And because we're talking ultimately about the Suez Crisis, there's a connection here. Because Hassan al-Banna, who was born in the Delta, once he graduated from university, he moved to Ismailia, in the Suez Canal Zone, where the Suez Canal Company was headquartered. And Ismailia, at that time, in the 1920s, was infamously multicultural, cosmopolitan, and heavily Europeanised. So, Hassan al-Banna saw with his own eyes what was happening to Egypt. It was being transformed. And he didn't like it. He began to preach against this in cafes, and this attracted a following. And that following, he soon turned into a formal organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now, Aimen, the Muslim Brotherhood, it was opposed to the Egyptian elite and their commitment to secularism and nationalism. And we have to remember, at this point, in the tens and twenties of the twentieth century, the Egyptian elite was heavily secularised, heavily modernised. They had adopted almost wholesale European customs and manners. Very, very, very provocative to a traditionalist like Hassan al-Banna.
Aimen Dean If you watch movies from the 1930s and forties and fifties Egypt, I mean, you would think basically you are just watching movies that were shot in, you know, in Greece or Italy or Spain. You wouldn't distinguish Egyptian, you know, downtowns, you know, from, you know, cosmopolitan places like Athens or Rome or Barcelona. I mean, they [crosstalk].
Thomas Small It was a very Mediterranean society.
Aimen Dean Exactly.
Thomas Small It was a very Mediterranean society, and more European than Middle Eastern in many respects, especially in the urban centres.
Another huge thing had happened a few years earlier, which had rocked the Middle East and was very important to the development of Hassan al-Banna's ideology. We've discussed this before. In 1924, the caliphate, which had had its centre in Istanbul for centuries, was abolished. So, the caliph, who claimed at least to be the leader of the whole Muslim world, was no more.
How deeply resonant would this have been, Aimen, for an Islamist like Hassan al-Banna?
Aimen Dean For people who idealised, you know, the office of the caliph, it was the ultimate calamity, because for as long as Islam existed, since the death of the Prophet Muhammad, there has always been a caliph. Yeah. Sometimes, basically, you have three caliphs that's, like, you know, existing at the same time.
Thomas Small Not so different from the Pope of Rome. I mean, at points, there were popes in Rome. There were anti-popes in Avignon. You know, it's kind of a – kind of a similar position.
Aimen Dean Exactly. But, you know, generally speaking, there was always one caliph in either Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo for as long as people remembered. And then, the Ottomans came. And for the first time, the caliphate position was transferred, in 1517, from an Arab to a non-Arab Turkic, you know, dynasty, which is, you know, the Ottomans. And they kept up that office from 1517 all the way until 1924. It was abolished.
Now, for the Muslim Brotherhood, it's all about restoring the caliphate. For the Salafist Egyptians who emerged also at the same time, it was about restoring the caliphate. And for a Jordanian scholar—. His name is Taqi al-Din al-Nabhanil. He is the founder of the Hizb ut-Tahrir. It's also a – a movement that wanted to restore the caliphate and established in the 1920s and thirties.
Thomas Small It's something that unites most Islamists, restoring the caliphate.
Aimen Dean Exactly. Abul A'la Maududi and the Jemaah Islamiyah in Pakistan and India and the Muslim League in India is all about the restoring the caliphate.
So, really, when people ask me, you know, "Did really people care about restoring the caliphate?"
And I will say, "Just look at how many groups, you know, emerged, you know, trying to restore the caliphate."
Thomas Small Certainly, in Egypt, a lot of people were attracted to Hassan al-Banna's ideas, because, by 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood had half a million members in two thousand branches across the countries. Quite a remarkable explosion of membership. And the Muslim Brotherhood lent its voice, its organisational powers, and, ultimately, its fists to the cause of Egyptian nationalism, to the anti-British cause in Egypt.
In 1936, the British and the Egyptian signed the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement, which limited the number of British troops in Egypt to ten thousand, and they were only there to defend the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal, I think it should go without saying, is incredibly important. All of the world's oil basically flows through it. Huge amounts of sea traffic, in general. And apart from ensuring oil and food security for the world, it also generates huge revenues, because to use the canal, you've got to pay.
Aimen Dean Absolutely.
Thomas Small So, it was a very important feather in the – in the British Imperial cap, and they didn't want to give it up.
So, as I say, in 1936, they signed an agreement that they would keep their troops in the canal zone. And this really irritated Egyptian nationalists and the Muslim Brotherhood, forcing a renegotiation in 1945. But Britain refused to compromise. It would not give up military control of the canal.
Throughout this period, the British were working as close as they could with the Egyptian government and its king, Fat Farouk, and the Muslim Brotherhood was increasingly seen as a threat. So, the prime minister outlawed the group in 1948. But then, this prime minister was assassinated by a Muslim Brotherhood member. And in retaliation, after luring him with promises of a peaceful negotiation, the Egyptian secret police assassinated Hassan al-Banna on the 12th of February 1949.
Aimen Dean Well, that assassination is what led to a series of events that will culminate in the ousting of the king.
Thomas Small That's right. So, in 1950, elections were won by the Wafd Party, who were nationalists. The Muslim Brotherhood had boycotted the election, which is probably why the Wafd Party won. At this point, the situation was tense, and the US got involved, which is where Operation Fat Fucker comes in. It was all about Suez, all about the canal and keeping shipping free of communist influence, especially the free flow of oil from the gulf to the West.
But the West had a problem. The country was in turmoil. Absolutely everyone (nationalists, communists, the Muslim Brotherhood) loathed the king, Fat Farouk.
Poor Farouk. I mean, we keep calling him Fat Farouk. Aimen, how is Farouk remembered today by the Arabs? I – I know of him. He's almost like a cartoonish character. Plump like a big overgrown baby, really, with his little fez, eating oysters. Apparently, he ate three hundred oysters a day.
Aimen Dean Oh, my God. I mean, I – I don't know, like, you know, I mean, how he was able to live for as long as he did. And in the end, actually, he died while eating. He died.
Thomas Small He was in a restaurant.
Aimen Dean Yeah. In 1970, in Rome.
Thomas Small Oh, poor Farouk.
Aimen Dean But, you know, for all, you know, what people say about him, for a while, of course, the [unintelligible], you know, and the Arab nationalists, they were always calling King Farouk, like, you know, the glutinous. You know, the greedy. The foreigner. He never belonged.
Thomas Small Corrupt.
Aimen Dean Corrupt. All of this thing. You know, that stood to the British. They – they never left anything, you know, that wasn't said about him. But in modern history, he is more fondly remembered.
Thomas Small You mean, more recently, his image has been rehabilitated?
Aimen Dean Yes. It's been habilitated. People remember him as gentle, cultured, and wasn't a tyrant.
Thomas Small Well, he wasn't a tyrant, actually. He really wasn't.
Aimen Dean He wasn't.
Thomas Small Well, at the very end, he started to be [unintelligible].
Aimen Dean Well, I mean, he was trying to keep the country together, because he felt that his gentle demeanour and his attempt to always rule by consensus, because he was just too lazy to rule to be honest, did actually lead to the state in almost descending into chaos.
So, he was trying too little too late, in the end, to put the country together and applying some measured force there. But in the end, when there was an uprising against him by the army, how did he respond? Did he shoot back? No. He, like a gentlemen …
Thomas Small True.
Aimen Dean … abdicated with honour and left in his yacht to go and hunt down the best restaurants in the Mediterranean.
Thomas Small Well, Fat Farouk's overthrow happened in 1952. It began early that year. The US was becoming especially concerned. British troops in the canal zone were being attacked by communists and by the Muslim Brotherhood. And there were horrific riots in Cairo that were targeting foreigners. It wasn't a good scene at all.
In this rising chaos, King Farouk began ruling increasingly by decree. And the US feared there might be a popular revolt against him, which would lead to Egypt being in the Soviet camp.
So, as in Iran, a year later, the CIA turned to the army. The Egyptian army already harboured within itself a group of young officers known as the Free Officers, who were very upset with King Farouk's rule, who felt utterly humiliated by the performance of the Egyptian army in 1948 against the nascent state of Israel, which we will talk about in the next episode. So, we can't really go into it now.
So, there was already a talk of revolution in the air within the army. One of these officers was a man who would grow to be an absolute titan, an iconic Arab, Gamal Abdel Nasser. When I say that name, Aimen—Gamal Abdel Nasser—what do you think?
Aimen Dean I—. You transform me back to the age of Arab nationalism, anti-Western sentiment, anti-Israeli sentiment. You transform me back to the age when it was all about nationalism. It was all about the Arab unity.
Thomas Small But Nasser the man, Aimen …
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small … Nasser the man.
Aimen Dean Well, you know, basically a giant who fell from grace.
Thomas Small Don't – don't skip to the end. Let's start at the beginning. We're in the fifties. We're—. This is Nasser in his prime. He's so handsome. He's so elegant, tall. Immaculately dressed. Those eyes. Those eyes. He was like a screen idol.
Aimen Dean He looked like Omar Sharif. I mean, he really looked like an actor.
Thomas Small Yeah.
Aimen Dean And he – he – he – he was elegant. Effortlessly elegant. The way he talks. His – his charisma gripped millions upon millions from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and beyond, I mean, to the point where he had a fan club among world leaders. Nehru of India. Sukarno of Indonesia. All of these people.
Thomas Small Tito in Yugoslavia.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. People were just looking at him and thinking, "Wow, what a titan. What a giant."
The man spoke English nicely. Arabic, nicely. You know, when he dressed and he talks to the people, people just gravitated towards him.
So, was he a good speaker? Yes. Was he a good orator? Yes. Was he a good leader? That is yet to be discussed.
Thomas Small Well, his rise to power began on the 23rd of July 1952, when Project Fat Fucker was put into effect. The night before, the conspirators had taken over defence positions in Cairo secretly. Well, they didn't—. Without—. With no fighting. There was no blood spilled. The US knew all about this. They had warned the British beforehand not to interfere. Any movement of British troops from Suez would be opposed with force. This was a serious – a serious coup.
Aimen Dean Well, Truman wasn't kidding around. He already, like, dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. Like, you know, I mean, and the British were not going to oppose him.
Thomas Small Poor Farouk. It must have landed like a nuclear bomb in his lap, because there, he found himself ushered onto a boat and he swam away, never to be seen in Egypt again.
Aimen Dean I—. Actually, I was—. In 2011. I stayed in the hotel, which was his palace. It's called the Palestine Hotel—now, it is the Hilton Hotel—in al-Muntazah Palace in Alexandria. So, it was there where he was, you know, cornered by the army and was told, you know, "Hey. It's over."
And so, he said, "Okay." You know? "I will abdicate in favour of my son, Fuad III. And, of course, he will basically abdicate, too."
And then, that's it. Like, you know, the rule of the Muhammad Ali dynasty came to an end. But it was so civilised. Not a single drop of blood, you know, was spilt. And actually, he was allowed to take his royal yacht. He was allowed to take a huge amount of cash and jewellery and money with him. And they gave him the twenty-one-gun salute, national anthem, you know, singing for the last time. And goodbye. Go enjoy your life in Europe.
Thomas Small It wasn't just goodbye to the Muhammad Ali dynasty. It was a goodbye to five thousand of royal in Egypt. And for the first time, Egypt was a republic. And for the first time in two thousand five hundred years, an Egyptian ran the show.
Aimen Dean Exactly. For two and a half thousand years, not as single native Egyptian ruled the country. Since the Persian invasion in the mid-550s by Cyrus the Great, the country was never controlled by its native population. Two and a half millennia.
Oh, and don't forget, Thomas, that, actually, the Muslim Brotherhood lent their support to the Free Officer Movement. Actually, for roughly two to three years, after the 1952 uprising, there was a honeymoon period actually between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Officers Movement.
Thomas Small What was in it for the – for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why did they support the Free Officers? I never quite understood that.
Aimen Dean The support for the Free Officers is that idea that the Free Officers would expel the British influence and with the promise that they will nationalise assets, including the canal, that belong to Egypt. Because the Free Officers already had in the programme these aspirations. It's just they didn't want to share power with a group of fanatics. That's how they view it. So, the nationalist military officers had their alliance with the Islamists and their wide base within the population. So, it was a marriage of convenience. But at some point, you can't share power. Because the Muslim Brotherhood were calling for elections, you know. There is the tiny, teeny, little detail of, "Yeah. Excuse me, officers. When can we have the elections?"
Thomas Small Nasser, especially, was opposed to elections.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small And he conspired to become the undisputed leader of the revolutionary movement. The details are complex. But in effect, Nasser would turn against the Muslim Brotherhood when they turned against his new constitution, which enshrined secularism. Obviously, this was very provocative to the Muslim Brotherhood. They could not accept a constitution for Egypt that enshrine secularism. So, they organised street protests, which turned into riots. And so, Nassar banned the Brotherhood in early 1954.
He's on the rise, and his trajectory is completed on the 26th of October of that year, 1954, when, during a speech broadcast live on the radio, he survived an assassination attempt. Now, this is interesting. He blamed it on the Brotherhood just like, if you remember the shah, in 1959, had blamed his assassination attempt on communists. But in fact, it may have not been the Brotherhood.
Aimen Dean There are some suggestions that it wasn't the Brotherhood, because, to this day, they deny it and, to this day, they say, "Really. We had nothing to do with it." And the evidence based on some, you know, documents released from, you know, the British, you know, intelligence and diplomatic archives suggest that it might have been a communist plot all along.
In Iran, however, it was the Islamists who wanted to assassinate the shah. But he blamed it on the communists. So, there you have it.
Thomas Small Well, yeah. Certainly, Nasser blamed the Muslim Brotherhood. He ordered a massive crackdown against them. It's at this point that the infamous Muslim Brotherhood idealogue, Sayyid Qutb, is – is jailed.
Aimen Dean Nasser's crackdown on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at the time was so brutal that the ramifications of that, you know, crackdown still lives with us today. To the point—.
Thomas Small And I hang my head in shame, Aimen, because my country had so much to do with it.
Aimen Dean Exactly. You know, CIA used Germans who used to work for the Gestapo and for Hitler's security apparatus and who switched sides to the Americans afterward. They brought them to Egypt in order to help Nasser up the brutal crackdown apparatus on the Muslim Brotherhood. Four thousand Muslim Brotherhood members died – died in jails, because of the torture.
And I can't go into details, because it's so graphic, but what I'm saying here is that, in these jails, the beginnings of the ideology that is the root of ISIS and Takfir and al-Qaeda and all the other jihadist groups began. Mustafa Shukri and others who started excommunicating the entire societies.
I mean, this is where, you know, Nasser's prisons give rise to ugly Islamism as opposed to the, you know, more malleable Islamism with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thomas Small And yet, after the Muslim Brotherhood cracked down, Nasser was supreme. The week before, he had actually finally got Britain to sign an agreement promising to evacuate their troops from the Suez Canal Zone in twenty months' time. He gave them twenty months to leave. A new era was opening in Egyptian history.
Nasserism is the name that we give to the political ideology that informed Nasser's rule. Nasserism. It was a revolutionary regime. He abolished parliament and political parties. He associated political parties with corrupt monarchical rule. He thought political parties served the interest of landowners and the liberal upper classes. He thought political parties and the liberal upper middle-class only.
Nasser thought that a multi-party system would lead to "one party acting as an agent to the American CIA, another upholding British interests, and a third working for the Soviets."
Aimen Dean Isn't this ironic?
Thomas Small Which is actually true.
Aimen Dean Isn't this ironic, actually, Thomas? You know, since he himself was helped by Fat Fucker, like, you know, I mean, to come to power. Or the CIA.
Thomas Small It's true. But – but it's – but it's also shrewd, because it had – it is basically what had happened in Iran in the for- – in the late forties and early fifties. He had watched this exact thing happened within Iran. One party, a pro-British. One party, pro-American. One party, pro-Soviet. So, he was no fool, Nasser.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small The revolution first focused on attacking landowners, whom he called feudalists. The officers saw these people as opposed to modernisation with reason. And so, they broke up their large estates into smaller parcels and distributed them to their tenants or – or to other landless peasants.
But at first, the revolution was kind of moderate. It didn't attack businessmen. It didn't attack industrialists. It wasn't like a full-blown Bolshevik revolution or anything. Because businessmen and capitalists were urban. They were westernised. They supported modernisation. So, Nasser supported them, but he wouldn't always do that, you know. Eventually, he turned against them, too. The country adopted a much more Soviet model of modern of economic modernisation.
In 1961, for example, all financial institutions and all industrial concerns were nationalised. I mean, that is quite an extreme move.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. Not, you know—. Do you know what happened, actually? That move, you know, lost Egypt one of its most important communities, which was the industrialists, as well as business and trade communities. The Italians and, most importantly, the Greeks. There were almost …
Thomas Small I know.
Aimen Dean … one-point-three million Greeks and Italians living in Alexandria and surrounding areas. And they were all forced to leave. They migrated to Australia, to New Zealand, to America, to Canada.
You know, like, you know, when you go to Melbourne, in Australia, they have one of the largest Greek communities in the world. In fact, the second largest Greek community in the world after Greece itself. And what they will tell you is that most of them came not from Greece directly. They came from Egypt. They came from Alexandria. And they remember Alexandria with such fondness, you know, as if—.
Thomas Small They remember it …
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small … as I thought I was going to experience it when I visited. And I was—. I wanted to see Greek Alexandria.
Aimen Dean Yeah. You missed it by thirty years, mate.
Thomas Small Nasser's ideology eventually grew into something called pan-Arabism. He thought that all the Arabs should be united under one large nation state with Cairo as its capital and him as their president.
Now, Aimen, you're always saying that you're a supporter of the nation state. Is there any universe where Nasser's dream of uniting all the Arabs under one banner, in one big nation state, would be, for you, an – an ideal?
Aimen Dean No. And I'll tell you why. Because, first of all, every nation has their own priorities, has their own national character, distinct traditions. You cannot just basically force this kind of union. You can have a confederation. You can have a – a sort of a trade, and to some extent, diplomatic union just like the EU, but you can't force them, you know, to be under one—.
Thomas Small But – but define nation, Aimen. Define nation. In the – in the fifties, people were saying the Arabs are one nation.
Aimen Dean That was a little bit of a stretch, because the Arabs were never one nation to begin with, except under the caliphate of the Umayyads and, to some extent, the Abbasids. And then, they were fragmented. The reality is that you can say that the North Africans, with the exception of Libyans—. Libyans are mostly Arab by DNA, because they're Arab tribes who settled there, mostly. But if you talk about Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, they're not Arabs. They are Berbers. You know, the number of Arab tribes who are originally from Arabia there, they are a minority. The majority are Tamazight. And if you look at Egypt—.
Thomas Small And Lebanese, Syrians. You're going to tell me their Phoenicians.
Aimen Dean Yeah. Well, not all of them, basically. But—. So, Lebanon, yes. But I would Syria, because there are so many Bedouin Arabs there. Jordan also. So many Bedouin Arabs. The Palestinians are a mix of Arabs and Phoenicians and the, you know, Philistines.
But if you look at the Egyptians, there was a study that says basically that only seventeen percent of the Egyptian population is actually Arab by DNA.
Thomas Small But are nations forged by DNA, by genetics? I mean, I thought nations are equally a question of culture, religion, and certainly language. I mean, this is the big thing. All of the Arabs speak Arabic. So, aren't they one Arabic nation?
Aimen Dean I'm sorry to my Algerian and the Moroccan listeners. And Tunisians also, I don't understand a word you say. So, you are not Arabs. Sorry.
But—. Yeah.
Thomas Small Harsh, Aimen. Wow. Below the belt.
Aimen Dean Hey. I'm just kidding.
Anyway, what I'm saying here is you just cannot lump nations like this together without having to address, you know, significant difference and subcultures here. And this is what he was trying to do. He was trying to unite Syria with Egypt, but that was a short-lived, you know, union. He was trying to not Yemen with Egypt by force. It just didn't work. And the same thing. The—. You know, the Saudis loved the idea of monarchy. People of Arabia loved the idea of monarchy, that a king can rule and have legitimacy more than, you know, basically someone who appointed himself, because he know how to speak and dress.
Again, we come back to the one-man show, you know, was working on the Egyptians, on the Syrians, on the Iraqis, but not on the people who actually wanted to be ruled by monarchs. It's the clashing ideas of how governance should be, you know, implemented.
Thomas Small A clash of civilisations, even. Who knows? Maybe we'll—. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, in fact, this idea of – of a pan-Arab nationalist seeking to use the military to unite people he thought shouldn't be divided has some echoes down to the present, wouldn't you say, perhaps in the battlefields of Ukraine?
Aimen Dean Absolutely. I mean, "Oh, you know, I have Russians there." Just because they speak Russian doesn't mean basically they belonged to Russia. Excuse me. Just because Kuwaitis are exactly the same tribes as the Saudis that Kuwait should be absorbed into Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, where does it stop? Where does it stop?
Thomas Small Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism would have big Cold War consequences. And as we're racing towards the Suez Crisis now, let me just lay out the Cold War regional chess board at the time.
I know I have these long historical rants, but they're useful. They're useful. Stick with me. First, the Soviet Union. It actually had no real presence in the region, but it was looking for a foothold, mainly to upset America's designs. Then, you have Nasser and an Arab nationalism in general. This player of the game hated Britain and France for colonialism and for supporting Israel. Then, you have Britain and France. They were both declining colonial powers desperate to maintain some military control of these newly independent states in the Middle East. France was particularly angry at Nasser's support of revolutionaries in Algeria, which they ruled. As for Britain, Churchill had actually just returned to power there after a six-year absence and he wanted to preserve what was left of the British Empire as best he could.
Oil security and countering Soviet expansion made both Britain and France allies of the US. But the US, under Eisenhower, who had just arrived on the scene, was anti-colonial. It supported nationalism instead. And this put the US at odds with its British and French allies.
Now, this is interesting. Churchill and Eisenhower actually met in New York in early 1953 to discuss Middle East policy. Churchill was looking for an agreement from Eisenhower that in any Middle East conflict, the US would act jointly alongside the UK. But Eisenhower said no, the United States would be supporting Arab nationalist ambitions.
Eisenhower referred to how the British had screwed up the situation in Iran under Mosaddegh. At this point, Iran is in the midst of its downward spiral, which led to the coup. And Eisenhower said, "Nationalism is on the march, and world communism is taking advantage of that spirit of nationalism to cause dissension in the free world. Moscow leads many misguided people to believe that they can count on communist help to achieve and sustain nationalistic ambitions."
So, Churchill did not get the agreement he was looking for from Eisenhower. And in May of 1953, with all that in mind, his new secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, traveled to Cairo to talk to Nasser about joining a new military pact, one like NATO but for the Middle East. In time, this would be called the Baghdad Pact, and Nassar wanted nothing to do with it. In his mind, Britain was the target. He didn't want to be in a military alliance with the US and Britain, because Britain was an occupying power. What did Nasser care about the Soviet Union? It was five thousand miles away. How would such a pact with America be different from what Britain was already doing to Egypt?
Nasser said to Dulles that he wanted to be neutral in the Cold War. Well, Eisenhower might have supported nationalist ambitions, but he didn't support anyone's neutrality in the Cold War. And so, the US reacted exactly as you would expect: badly. They were pissed off and made two massive errors with big geopolitical consequences. First, the US refused to sell Nasser any arms to help him modernise the Egyptian army.
So, instead, Aimen, who do you think he turned to for his arms?
Aimen Dean You know, there are only four vendors at the time: the US, France, UK, and the Soviet Union. Of course, we can exclude the first three. So, there is only the Soviet Union.
Thomas Small Indeed. He turned to the Soviet Union, which helped him broker an arms deal with Czechoslovakia in September of 1955. This must resonate down to the present. I mean, the Middle East is still a good market for Russian weaponry, isn't it?
Aimen Dean Not as it used to be. I mean, there has been a significant decline now. But yes, up until twenty years ago, it was a good market. But not anymore.
Thomas Small But what about all the infamous weapons markets in Yemen, for example, selling, you know, selling a cut rate Kalashnikovs and things? I mean, in the old generation, there are still lots of Russian guns floating around.
Aimen Dean If you are talking about small firearms, yes. You know, they are popular and they are reliable and they are good. But also, they've been declining, because the American war in Iraq and, of course, the fight in Syria and other places opened up the market for American small firearms. They are as popular now as AK-47s.
Thomas Small Oh, that's good news.
So, the second massive blunder that America made with Nasser was in relation to a major prong of Nasser's development programme, which, I said, was modernising agriculture. And he wanted to build—and here we go—a massive new dam in upper Egypt, in the south, at Aswan. The Aswan Dam. It would allow Egypt to fully control the flooding of the Nile River, enabling what Nasser thought would be better irrigation and higher yields. Sadly, in fact, it's turned out to be a massive tragedy for Egypt.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. Because, actually, the natural minerals and the sediments that the river actually brought with it all the way uninterrupted by any dam is what made Egypt more fertile. Actually, the dam caused, you know, a significant drop in the ground fertility since then.
Thomas Small Well, the 1950s were all about big projects that were going to overcome nature.
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small And when Nasser turned to the World Bank, asking for a loan to help him build his dam, the US imposed conditions, which, in his eyes, amounted to controlling the whole Egyptian economy, i.e., the same sort of deal that the French and British had demanded from the khedive a hundred years earlier for building the Suez Canal.
So, Nasser said, "Look, if the World Bank isn't going to finance the dam, I'm going to have to raise money elsewhere." And on the 26th of July 1956, he nationalised the Suez Canal.
A massive, massive punch in the face to the British.
Aimen Dean And it was all very well staged on TV while he was doing a TV address. He was addressing a group of ministers and a group of politicians. And then, you know, he gave the secret word, you know, to his secret service to go and occupy all the sensitive parts of the zone, of the canal zone, and then, they took it over. And then, once the signal came to him that the complete takeover of the canal has been achieved, he said to the people he was addressing that, "Now, I can address that the canal has now fallen into Egyptian hands." And he announced the canal to be a public Egyptian company.
Thomas Small It was also perfectly timed, because only one week before, Britain had completed its promised evacuation of the canal zone.
Aimen Dean Exactly. So, it was the engineers. It was civilians.
Thomas Small It – it had withdrawn all its troops.
Aimen Dean Yeah. But the engineers were there, still. It was completely run by engineers and by, they call them, pilots. They're not pilots. You know, aviation pilots. They are actually water canal pilots who, you know, can guide the ships through the canal. Secretly, he was already training Egyptian pilots, Egyptian canal pilots, basically, to guide the ships through the canal. So, the takeover was seamless, almost.
Thomas Small Well, Nasser's nationalisation of the canal was provocative both to Britain and France. And the two countries initially planned separate Egyptian invasion campaigns. And this is because France wanted to include Israel in the invasion, but Britain didn't want to do so. It – it didn't want to offend Arab opinion in Iraq and Jordan. So, initially, Britain refused to work with France on that plan.
Israel—. And again, what we're going to talk about Israel in the next episode, so I don't want to go too much into it here, but they wanted the Gaza Strip. It was then held by Egypt, and the Egyptians had been attacking Israel from it. So, they really wanted the Gaza Strip and they also wanted, if possible, to get their hands on the Sinai peninsula to protect the Gulf of Aqaba, through which Israeli shipping was going from the Port of Eilat.
So, Israel was onsite. They were, you know, itching to invade along with the French. And it took some time for Britain to be talked into it. But on the 24th of October 1956, the three countries signed what's called the Protocol of Sèvres in France. They agreed to work together. They agreed an invasion of Egypt.
The 29th of October 1956, they launched. This is—. In the West, it's known as the Suez Crisis. In the Arab world, it's called the Tripartite Aggression.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. Yeah.
Thomas Small A much more – a much more accurate name. It had three stages. First, Israel invaded through the Gaza Strip and into Egypt proper. While they did so, the British and French provided air support from aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and then began to bomb Egyptian positions. The goal was to destroy the Egyptian economy.
I mean, it was really brutal. In response, Nasser closed the canal, which obviously made the whole world sit up and notice. World shipping was dependent on the canal.
Britain and France, to the last minute, assumed that when push came to shove, the US would support them. However, they were disappointed. Eisenhower did not stand by his allies. He condemned the invasion of Egypt, because he felt he couldn't risk alienating the Arabs and pushing them into the hands of the Soviets. So, the US drew up a resolution in the UN Security Council. And get this. Look at this politics, security council politics. You won't believe it. The US draw up a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw its troops from Egypt. But this was vetoed by Britain and France. This is not how the Security Council usually works.
Aimen Dean Yeah. And actually, this is the first and maybe the last time, you know, the US stood against Israel, so.
Thomas Small the UN Security Council route didn't work. And so, the – the Soviet Union got involved. Khrushchev, the premier, actually threatened to – to use his newly acquired nuclear weapons, which was really too far for Britain and France, for the invaders. And so, they cancelled and withdrew. The fighting had gone on for just over a week. Four thousand Egyptians died, including one thousand civilians. The Israeli-Britain-French side had far fewer casualties.
So, the Suez Crisis. Not a shining moment for Britain and France, would you say?
Aimen Dean Well, I mean, I think also, at that time, if Churchill was in charge, maybe he would have been more cautious. But because it was Anthony Eden, you know, his protégé.
Thomas Small Yes. Churchill had been – had had resigned and been replaced by Anthony Eden.
Aimen Dean Yeah. And he had a promising career. And it was Suez which ended him.
Thomas Small Suez really redounds into the present day. It's become almost a byword for a late imperial overstretch. The sort of last gasp attempt of a dying empire to – to shore up its interests. It – it was certainly the – the – the point when the US was firmly situated in control of the Western world's affairs. If the US said no, you didn't do it.
Aimen Dean Yeah. Totally.
Thomas Small But on the Egyptian side, Nasser emerged from the Suez Crisis more powerful than ever. He was in his glory. And he moved from one success to another. I mean, he – he had undermined the Baghdad Pact. He had negotiated his Czech arms deal, basically wrestling out from under any Western military oversight. He nationalised the Suez Canal successfully. And then, he won a war against Britain, France, and Israel.
I mean, this is amazing. The Arab world erupt in jubilation and joy. They think, "We're on our way. We are going to be, you know, shoulder to shoulder with – with the West and with the Soviets." It was a heady time.
Now, the Suez Crisis had a huge impact on the Cold War. On the one hand, Nasser turned against the West more or less decisively, which gave the Soviet Union that foothold they had always been hoping for in the Middle East. And for the next twenty years, informally at least, Egypt was a partner of the Soviet bloc.
America had really shot itself in the foot. I mean, they should have worked closer with Nasser. They should have done what they said they were going to do to Churchill, i.e., support nationalist ambitions. But in the end, they didn't. They really supported their own Cold War interests. It meant that that where they weren't before, the Soviets now were, the Middle East.
And then, what's ironic is that the Soviet presence in the Middle East led to what's called the Eisenhower Doctrine. In 1957, Eisenhower said that the United States army would do whatever it took to "stand against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism."
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small So – so, five years earlier, he is telling Churchill, "We are not interested in any imperialism. We – we – we support nationalist ambitions." But suddenly, they're going to intervene militarily if any independent nation allies with the Soviet Union. The logic of – of empire is very hard to avoid, I think.
And so, as a result of Nasser's actions, the Cold War is hotter than ever right in the Middle East. We are going to continue this story next time with when we talk about Israel and Palestine and move into the 1960s. Nasser will come back, but we – we're leaving him in his glory. We will next tell the story [crosstalk].
Aimen Dean Let them enjoy it a bit. Let them enjoy it.
Thomas Small I think based on what we've been discussing today, we're now in a position to see the Cold War, not so much as an East versus West conflict, which is how it's usually understood, but as a conflict between different colonial powers over the colonised world. You have the old colonial powers on their way out and new colonial powers on their way in. And I must say, especially the United States. The Soviet Union was more opportunistic, more reactive. It was the United States that felt it needed to ensure that the Middle East and other states that were bordering the Soviet Union remained outside of Soviet influence, and would inexorably adopt imperialistic techniques and imperialistic strategies to achieve that end.
The great game between Russia and the British was just continuing between the Soviets and the Americans.
Aimen Dean And who, in the end, pays the price? The ordinary people. As always.
Thomas Small And that makes me think of the present, Aimen. And I—. You know, my thoughts aren't particularly well formed about this. But I do see, in the Suez Crisis, so many echoes of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine and, really, between Russia and the West, you know, where on the one hand—.
I mean, here's what I want to say, Aimen. Frankly, the sort of language that Eisenhower is using to Churchill in that meeting in 1953 in New York is sort of similar to the contradictions of American rhetoric today. You know, America says that it supports independence. Big empires or big hegemonic powers, they claim to support the independence of countries when it suits their aim.
Aimen Dean Absolutely.
Thomas Small And when it doesn't suit their aims …
Aimen Dean Totally.
Thomas Small … they – they don't. So, right now, the United States is making a lot of fuss about this sovereignty of Ukraine. Similarly, in 1956, the Soviet Union made a big fuss about the sovereignty of Egypt, and it said, "We – we cannot have this – this unlawful invasion of Egypt by Israel, France, and Britain."
But that very same year, the Soviet Union, had rolled its tanks into Hungary and crushed an uprising there.
Aimen Dean Absolutely.
Thomas Small So, what does this tell us? I mean, it makes me quite cynical, I must say.
Aimen Dean First of all, if you are looking for honesty, you know, with politicians, I mean, I don't know. Like, you know, I mean, you're – you're—. I mean, one must be deluded to think basically that you can trust world leaders. I mean, look, in my opinion, what Putin is doing right now, he is actually maybe repeating the Suez Crisis. The Ukraine crisis are going to be maybe his undoing.
Thomas Small Totally.
Aimen Dean He is actually—. And there is another Nasser rising, you know. Zelensky, you know, which is the president of Ukraine. An aggression against his country could actually turn them into a symbol of resistance, a symbol of independence, a symbol of nationhood.
Thomas Small I agree. I think …
Aimen Dean Yeah.
Thomas Small … the Suez Crisis really is a good …
Aimen Dean Metaphor. Yeah.
Thomas Small … symbol of what's going on now.
Aimen Dean Absolutely.
Thomas Small Yeah. A good metaphor of what's going on. I've been thinking that one way of understanding Putin's move here is as the last gasp of the Russian empire. You know, a five-hundred-year-old state structure. The last gasp of an empire on the way out. Just like Britain and France invading Egypt was [crosstalk].
Aimen Dean Absolutely. He is living in a world of delusions.
Thomas Small Well, there he is, dreaming of bringing the Tsar back. And in 1956, in Nasser's prisons, Islamists dreaming of bringing the caliph back.
Aimen Dean Exactly.
Thomas Small The echoes are – are—. The echoes are almost creepy.
As far as our clash of civilisations theme goes, you know, Islamism versus modernism, there you have it right there. Nasser is in his glory, but in the bowels of his increasingly despotic regime are men nursing a ferocious ambition to throw off the West and bring back the caliphate.
Next time, we're going to talk about Israel. My goodness, there's a massive clash of civilisations dimension to – to that conflict.
Aimen Dean It's a multidimensional clash of civilisations there.
Thomas Small A clash. It's a fist fuck of civilisations. That's my last time I'm using the F word, I swear, in this – in this series.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. Absolutely.
Thomas Small This is your biweekly reminder that if you are not doing so already, you can follow the show @MHConflicted on Twitter and Facebook and argue over the finer points we've raised with other fans of the show on our Facebook discussion page. You can find that by searching "Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group" over on Facebook.
Finally, I wanted to let you all know that at the end of each episode, Aimen and I choose a question from a listener and answer it in our exclusive extended bonus feed. If you would like to be featured, ask us your questions on Twitter or Facebook. And then, to hear your name on the podcast and get your answer, subscribe to ad-free listening and extended bonus content for just 99p on Apple Podcasts. Or if you listen on Spotify, you can find Conflicted Extra also for just 99p per month.
And that, as they say, is that. Please join us in two weeks' time for another exciting episode of Conflicted.
Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Sandra Ferrari. Sandra Ferrari is also our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.
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