Suez in the Rearview: What 1956 Can (and Cannot) Teach Us About the War with Iran

Thanks to The Rest Is History Podcast for inspiring this blog post and the next collection of What IF posts for November and December.

History rarely repeats itself, but it does leave behind warnings. In the autumn of 1956, Britain and France joined Israel in attacking Egypt; the opening blows landed, the enemy’s forces were battered, and yet within weeks the campaign had become one of the great political disasters of the twentieth century. Seventy years later, the United States has joined Israel in a war against Iran that began with stunning early results and has since settled into something harder to name: a conflict of ceasefires, resumed strikes, stalled talks, and no clear finish line.

The comparison is tempting, and it is worth making carefully. Suez offers a real lesson about what happens when leaders mistake battlefield success for political victory, and when they assume a hostile government’s own people will finish the job. However, the analogy also breaks down in important ways, and those breaks matter just as much for anyone teaching students to think historically. This post walks through both: where 1956 rhymes with 2026, and where it does not.

A note on timing: the war with Iran is ongoing, and the facts below reflect reporting available as of early November 2026. Some of what follows will date quickly; that, too, is a lesson in how historians and teachers should handle the present.

What Happened at Suez

The crisis began with money. On July 19, 1956, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles withdrew American funding for Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, and Britain followed. A week later (on July 26, in a speech in Alexandria), Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that Egypt was nationalizing the Suez Canal Company and would use its revenues to build the dam itself. Egypt offered to compensate the company’s shareholders, and the canal kept running smoothly under Egyptian pilots; nonetheless, London and Paris treated the seizure as an intolerable blow.

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden saw Nasser through the lens of the 1930s. He had resigned as foreign secretary in 1938 over appeasement, and he cast Nasser as a new Mussolini whose ambitions had to be stopped early. France had its own motive, since Nasser was supporting the rebellion in Algeria. Israel, facing cross-border raids from Egyptian-controlled Gaza and a blockade of its shipping through the Straits of Tiran, had reasons of its own.

In late October, the three governments agreed in secret (the Protocol of Sèvres) on a plan. Israel would invade the Sinai, and Britain and France would then step in as “peacekeepers” to separate the two sides and retake the canal. Israel attacked on October 29. Anglo-French bombing followed, and paratroopers landed at Port Said on November 5 and 6.

Militarily, the operation worked. Politically, it collapsed almost immediately. Nasser sank ships to block the canal, which stayed closed until the spring of 1957. Oil to Western Europe was cut off, and Britain introduced petrol rationing. Most decisively, President Eisenhower, furious at being deceived and in the middle of his own reelection campaign, refused to support the pound during a run on sterling. Britain agreed to a ceasefire on November 6 with its troops holding only a short stretch of the canal. A UN Emergency Force replaced them, Eden resigned in January 1957, and Nasser emerged as the most celebrated leader in the Arab world.

The Rhyme: Early Success, No Endgame

The United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026 (Operation Epic Fury, with Israel’s part called Operation Roaring Lion). The opening phase was devastating. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike on his compound that first day, and the defense minister, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, and other senior officials followed in the weeks after. President Trump told CNBC on March 1 that operations were “ahead of schedule.”

Yet the regime did not fall. The leadership chose Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as supreme leader on March 8. Iran answered with missiles and drones against Israel, US bases, and Gulf states, and it closed the Strait of Hormuz; oil rose above $100 a barrel. A ceasefire took hold in April, an interim deal in June reopened the strait, and then Trump declared the ceasefire “over” in July as strikes resumed. By late October, with the war nearing its eight-month mark and fuel prices weighing on the midterms, Trump told a Florida rally that the US “may do another little Epic Fury.”

That pattern should sound familiar to anyone who knows 1956. Eden’s forces won every engagement and still lost the war, because the purpose of the operation was political (bring down Nasser, restore control of the canal) and force alone could not deliver it. The closest parallel today is the same gap between military means and political ends. US and Israeli officials have given shifting reasons for the war, ranging from destroying missile and nuclear capabilities to what Trump himself called “effectively regime change” in his February 28 video. When the goals keep moving, it becomes very hard to say what victory would look like, and therefore very hard to stop.

Betting on the people

The second rhyme is the assumption that an unpopular government would crack from within. In 1956, British planners hoped that defeat at Port Said would bring Nasser’s fall, and British-run broadcasts urged Egyptians to turn on him. Instead, Egyptians rallied. The resistance at Port Said became a national legend, and Nasser’s prestige soared.

Iran’s case looked more promising, at least at first. In late December 2025, protests over a collapsing currency and soaring prices grew into the largest uprising since the 1979 revolution, spreading to more than 170 cities by early January. The regime answered with an internet blackout and mass killing; even Iran’s own Supreme National Security Council put the death toll at 12,000 or more. Trump had publicly promised to help the protesters. It was reasonable to think that a population this angry might rise once the regime was struck from outside.

The early evidence suggests something closer to 1956. Political scientist Vali Nasr argued in March that the bombing had shifted the central question for Iranians from whether they supported the regime to whether they supported the war; many who despise the theocracy rallied to defend their country. Israeli analysts at the INSS had seen the same effect after the 12-day war of June 2025, noting that Iranians rallied around the Iranian flag (not necessarily the regime’s). The picture is not one-sided, and some Iranians did protest during the war itself; still, no wartime uprising has toppled the government.

Eden, Trump, and the Feeling of Being Right

Eden did not think of himself as an aggressor. He believed he was standing up to a dictator before it was too late, and the memory of Munich made that belief feel like moral clarity. The trouble was that a sincere conviction is not the same as a sound justification. Eden’s case rested on an analogy (Nasser as Mussolini) that did not fit, on a legal pretext (the “peacekeeping” intervention) that was arranged in advance, and on an expected outcome (Nasser’s collapse) that never came. When the pretext was exposed, the moral claim went with it.

Critics of the Iran war argue that Trump’s case shares that structure. They point to the shifting rationales; to the fact that the strikes came while indirect nuclear talks were still underway; and to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s statement that it had no evidence of an organized Iranian weapons program. UN Secretary-General António Guterres and a number of governments condemned the strikes, and several critics called them illegal. On this reading, the confidence of the opening weeks resembles Eden’s: a belief that the cause was obviously just, followed by the discovery that much of the world, and many Iranians, saw it differently.

The war’s defenders see a very different picture. They argue that Iran’s leadership had just massacred thousands of its own citizens; that it had armed proxies from Lebanon to Yemen; and that it had spent years enriching uranium beyond any civilian need. Unlike Eden, Trump did not hide his partnership with Israel behind a staged pretext. Several US allies (including Australia, Canada, Germany, and others in the EU) supported the strikes at least in part, and Gulf states condemned Iran’s retaliation against them. To supporters, the comparison with Suez flatters Tehran: Eden attacked a government that had seized a canal, while the United States struck one that had threatened Israel’s existence and killed its own people in the streets.

Both arguments are worth putting in front of students, because the deeper lesson of Suez is not that Eden was wicked. It is that leaders who feel certain they are right are often the least likely to ask what happens after the first week. Whether that describes the Iran war is a question the next year will help answer.

Video Courtsey of 60 Minutes and CBS News. It begins where POTUS Trump answers questions about the Iranian events.

Where the Analogy Breaks

The most important difference is the nature of the governments under attack. On the surface, Nasser and the Islamic Republic look alike: both were authoritarian, both defied the West, and both were hostile to Israel. Underneath, they were very different regimes with very different relationships to their own people.

Nasser was popular; the Islamic Republic is not

In 1956, Nasser was a young revolutionary only four years removed from overthrowing a corrupt monarchy. He had pushed through land reform and negotiated the British evacuation of the Canal Zone (completed just weeks before the crisis), and nationalizing the canal made him a hero far beyond Egypt. He did jail his rivals, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the communists; still, his support was broad, and the Egyptians who rallied in 1956 were rallying to him. Iran’s leadership, by contrast, is the aging core of a revolution now 47 years old. It had just survived an uprising rooted in economic collapse and a deep crisis of legitimacy, and it put that uprising down with mass killing. When Iranians rallied in 2026, many were rallying to their country rather than to their rulers. A rally-around-the-flag effect that rests on national pride instead of loyalty to the regime may prove much less durable than Egypt’s did in 1956.

Different kinds of hostility to Israel

Nasser’s hostility to Israel came out of secular Arab nationalism: the defeat of 1948, the Palestinian refugees, and Egypt’s claim to lead the Arab world. It was real and often belligerent (Egypt sponsored fedayeen raids from Gaza), but it was a state rivalry within a regional system, and in 1956 Egypt had no nuclear program and no network of armed proxies across the region. The Islamic Republic’s opposition is ideological and religious; its leaders have called for Israel’s elimination, and it built an “axis” of allied forces, including Hezbollah and the Houthis, along with a nuclear program that much of the world viewed with alarm. A shared anti-Israel stance does not make the two cases the same, and treating them as interchangeable flattens both.

No Eisenhower in the room

The structure of power is different too. Suez ended because the senior partner in the Western alliance turned on its allies: Washington used financial pressure and the United Nations to force Britain and France to stop. Britain was a declining power with a fragile currency, and it could not afford to defy the United States. In 2026, the United States is the senior partner. No outside power has the leverage Eisenhower had; mediation has come instead from Pakistan, and the pressure on the White House is coming mostly from home, in the form of fuel prices and a midterm election. A superpower can absorb costs that broke Britain in a matter of days, which is one reason this war has lasted months rather than weeks.

A different kind of target

Finally, the goals differ. Eden wanted a canal back and a rival gone. The stated aims in Iran include destroying missile and nuclear capabilities, which is something air power can partly achieve whether or not the government survives. Defenders of the war can therefore claim real gains that had no equivalent in 1956, even as the larger political outcome remains open.

The Lesson That Should Have Carried Forward

If Suez teaches one thing, it is that a war’s political end has to be defined before its first shot. Eden had a military plan for Port Said and no plan for the morning after. He assumed the outcome he wanted (Nasser gone, Egyptians grateful) and built nothing for the more likely outcome (Nasser stronger, the canal blocked, the oil cut off, Washington furious). The cost was not only Eden’s career. Suez ended Britain’s pretensions as an independent great power in the Middle East, gave Nasser a decade of influence, and pushed Arab nationalism toward Moscow.

The parallel lesson for 2026 is not that the Iran war is doomed to end like Suez. The two wars differ too much for that. It is narrower and more useful: striking a hostile government’s leaders is not the same as changing what its people believe, and a foreign bombing campaign tends to turn domestic opponents into reluctant defenders, at least for a time. Iran’s rulers are far less popular than Nasser ever was, so the opening for change inside Iran may be real. History suggests that opening is more likely to come after the war than because of it.

For teachers, this is a chance to model a habit students need: using the past to ask better questions about the present, rather than to deliver ready-made verdicts. An analogy is a tool for noticing patterns. It becomes a trap when it decides the answer for us.

Discussion Questions

1. Eden compared Nasser to Mussolini. What makes a historical analogy persuasive to leaders and voters, and how can we test whether it actually fits?

2. Why might a population that opposes its own government still rally to defend its country when foreign bombs fall? Does the 1956 Egyptian case or the 2026 Iranian case tell us more about that pattern?

3. In 1956, the United States stopped its allies. Who, if anyone, plays that restraining role in 2026, and what does the answer reveal about how global power has shifted?

4. Using the differences between Nasser and Iran’s leadership, write a short argument either for or against the claim that “Iran is the new Suez.”

Sources

This is part of my Politics in the Classroom series, where I look at the importance of political campaigns, pop culture, sports, music, and geopolitics of the last 150 years and how to use them as resources in the classroom.
To read more, check out my other posts in the series. (Link)