Editing Suez Crisis (section)

===== Nasser and the United States =====
Most of all, Nasser wanted the United States to supply arms on a generous scale to Egypt.<ref name="Burns, William p. 24"/> Nasser refused to promise that any U.S. arms he might buy would not be used against Israel, and rejected out of hand the American demand for a [[Military Assistance Advisory Group]] to be sent to Egypt as part of the arms sales.<ref name="Burns, William pp. 16">{{Harvnb|Burns|1985|pp=16–17, 18–22}}</ref>

Nasser's first choice for buying weapons was the United States. However his frequent [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionist]] speeches and sponsorship of the [[Palestinian fedayeen|Palestinian ''fedayeen'']], who made frequent raids into Israel, rendered it difficult for the [[Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower administration]] to get the approval of Congress necessary to sell weapons to Egypt. American public opinion was deeply hostile towards selling arms to Egypt that might be used against Israel. Moreover, Eisenhower feared doing so could trigger a Middle Eastern arms race.<ref name="Burns, William pp. 16"/> Eisenhower very much valued the [[Tripartite Declaration of 1950|Tripartite Declaration]] as a way of keeping peace in the Near East. In 1950, in order to limit the extent that the Arabs and the Israelis could engage in an [[arms race]], the three nations which dominated the arms trade in the non-Communist world, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France, had signed the Tripartite Declaration, where they had committed themselves to limiting how much arms they could sell in the Near East, and also to ensuring that any arms sales to one side was matched by arms sales of equal quantity and quality to the other.<ref>{{Harvnb|Neff|1981|p=73}}</ref> Eisenhower viewed the Tripartite Declaration, which sharply restricted how many arms Egypt could buy in the West, as one of the key elements in keeping the peace between Israel and the Arabs, and believed that setting off an arms race would inevitably lead to a new war.

The Egyptians made continuous attempts to purchase heavy arms from [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] years before the 1955 deal.<ref name="Laron-p16">{{Cite web |last=Laron |first=Guy |date=February 2007 |title=Cutting the Gordian Knot: The Post-WWII Egyptian Quest for Arms and the 1955 Czechoslovak Arms Deal |url=http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/cutting-the-gordian-knot-the-post-wwii-egyptian-quest-for-arms-and-the-1955-czechoslovak |publisher=wilsoncenter.org |page=16 |quote="Egyptian representatives were able to sign a new commercial agreement with Czechoslovakia on 24 October 1951, which included a secret clause stating that "the government of Czechoslovakia will provide the Egyptian government with arms and ammunition—to be selected by Egyptian experts—worth about 600 million Egyptian pounds, to be paid in Egyptian cotton." The Egyptian experts requested 200 tanks, 200 armored vehicles, 60 to 100 MIG-15 planes, 2,000 trucks, 1,000 jeeps, and other items.... Czechoslovakia would not be able to supply weapons to Egypt in 1952. And each year, from then until 1955, Prague kept finding new reasons to delay the shipments "}}</ref>

Nasser had let it be known, in 1954–55, that he was considering buying weapons from the Soviet Union, and thus coming under Soviet influence, as a way of pressuring the Americans into selling him the arms he desired.<ref name="Gaddis, John Lewis, p. 171"/> Khrushchev, who very much wanted to win the Soviet Union influence in the Middle East, was more than ready to arm Egypt if the Americans proved unwilling.<ref name="Gaddis, John Lewis, p. 171"/> During secret talks with the Soviets in 1955, Nasser's demands for weapons were more than amply satisfied as the Soviet Union had not signed the Tripartite Declaration.<ref>{{Harvnb|Neff|1981|pp=93–94}}</ref> The news in September 1955 of the Egyptian purchase of a huge quantity of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia was greeted with shock and rage in the West, where this was seen as a major increase in Soviet influence in the Near East.<ref>Goldman, Marshal ''Soviet Foreign Aid'', New York: Fredrich Prager, 1968, p. 60.</ref> In Britain, the increase of Soviet influence in the Near East was seen as an ominous development that threatened to put an end to British influence in the oil-rich region.<ref>{{Harvnb|Adamthwaite|1988|p=450}}</ref>