Could Trump’s Iran Fiasco Be America’s Suez Crisis?
May 11, 2026 Could Trump’s Iran Fiasco Be America’s Suez Crisis? Medea Benjamin - Nicolas J. S. Davies Facebook Twitter Reddit Bluesky Email British antiwar protesters during the Suez crisis September 12, 1956. Photo: Socialist Worker archive Empires rise and fall. They do not last forever. Imperial declines follow a gradual shifting of the economic tides, but are also punctuated and defined by critical tipping points. There are many differences between the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the US war on Iran today, but similarities in the larger context suggest that the United States is facing the same kind of “end of empire” moment that the British Empire faced in that historic crisis. In 1956, the British Empire was still resisting independence movements in many of its colonies. The horrors of British Mau Mau concentration camps in Kenya and Britain’s brutal guerrilla war in Malaya continued throughout the 1950s, and, like the United States today, Britain st...
