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 a political point of view, resulting in international criticism and diplomatic pressure. Along with the Suez crisis, the United States was also dealing with the near-simultaneous Hungarian revolution. Vice President Richard Nixon later explained: "We couldn't on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against Nasser". Beyond that, it was Eisenhower's belief that if the United States were seen to acquiesce in the attack on Egypt, that the resulting backlash in the Arab world might win the Arabs over to