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 blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, in contravention of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Many argued that this was also a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements. According to the Egyptian historian Abd al-Azim Ramadan, the events leading up to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, as well as other events during Nasser's rule, showed Nasser to be far from a rational, responsible leader. Ramadan notes Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal without political consultation as an example of his predilection for solitary decision-making. The nationalisation surprised Britain and its Commonwealth. There had been no discussion of the canal