Suez Crisis to prefer to use the sea route through the Suez Canal. As it was, the rise of super-tankers for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, which were too big to use the Suez Canal meant that British policy-makers greatly overestimated the importance of the canal. By 2000, only 8 percent of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez canal with the rest coming via the Cape route. In August 1956 the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a report titled "Britain and the Suez Canal" revealing government perception of the Suez area. It reiterates several times the strategic
Suez Crisis withdrawn soon, and Israeli troops to withdraw later on, while keeping control over the Suez Canal. After the fighting ended, Abdel Hakim Amer, Egypt's Chief-of-Staff, accused Nasser of provoking an unnecessary war and then blaming the military for the result. The British historian D. R. Thorpe wrote that the imposed ending to the Crisis gave Nasser "an inflated view of his own power". In his mind, he had defeated the combined forces of the United Kingdom, France and Israel, whereas in fact the military operation had been "defeated" by pressure from the United States. Despite the Egyptian defeat, Nasser emerged