Nasser’s mere survival was construed as a victory

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 302.

The British, inevitably, take a solipsistic view of the Suez Crisis, viewing it in terms of end of empire. The wider ramifications of Eden’s decisions in 1956 were much more serious than that. The first reform Communist government to declare formally that it was leaving the Warsaw Pact would have been crushed anyway, but Suez so reduced the cost the Soviets paid for the violence they inflicted on Hungary, for the Americans had to deal with this totally unwanted distraction in Egypt. British and French influence in the Arab world was destroyed and, save for Jordan and some minor autocratic Gulf states, trust has never recovered; nor has it been between France and Britain, not that there was much in the first place. France threw its influence behind Israel, equipping it in 1957 with its Dimona nuclear reactor, which it would use to produce an arsenal of atomic bombs it pretends it might not possess. In Arab eyes Israel would be indelibly identified with Western imperialism – a latter-day crusader state – and Nasser’s mere survival was construed as a victory, which became a wider impediment to political realism in the Middle East.

A foolish fit of former colonial muscle flexing, insignificant in itself but with decades of consequences.