France and the Commonwealth of Nations at times, it has been suggested that France join the Commonwealth. In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, during which France and the United Kingdom's interests in the Middle East aligned, it was proposed by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet that France and the UK create a Franco-British Union, with common citizenship and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. His British counterpart, Anthony Eden, instead proposed that France join the Commonwealth, with Commonwealth citizenship rights and recognising the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth. However, this was rejected by Mollet. La Francophonie, which was founded to promote the French language
Suez Crisis to gather intelligence from British bases in Cyprus. The British relationship with the United States did not suffer lasting consequences from the crisis. "The Anglo-American 'special relationship' was revitalised immediately after the Suez Crisis", writes Risse Kappen. The United States wanted to restore the prestige of its closest ally and thus "The two governments...engaged in almost ritualistic reassurances that their 'special relationship' would be restored quickly". One example came with Britain's first Hydrogen bomb test Operation Grapple which led to the 1958 U.S.–UK Mutual Defence Agreement. Six years after the crisis, the Americans amazed the British by selling them state-of-the-art