Salah Salem by the Iraqi government. He condemned Iraq's membership of the Baghdad Pact, saying: "This is a serious development which may threaten the Arab League and expose Arab nationalism to great dangers..." On January 31, 1955, he along with foreign and prime ministers from Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. The meeting ended with a realisation that the demands of Said's Iraq and Nasser' Egypt were irreconcilable. In the Suez Crisis of 1956, known in Egypt as the "Tripartite Aggression", Salem is said to have demanded that Nasser hand himself over to the British forces invading
Suez Crisis sided with the Arab states in several disputes with Israel in 1953–54. Moreover, Dulles did not share any sentimental regard for the Anglo-American "special relationship", which led the Americans to lean towards the Egyptian side in the Anglo-Egyptian disputes. During the extremely difficult negotiations over the British evacuation of the Suez Canal base in 1954–55, the Americans generally supported Egypt, though at the same time trying hard to limit the extent of the damage that this might cause to Anglo-American relations. In the same report of May 1953 to Eisenhower calling for "even-handedness", Dulles stated that the Egyptians were not