wanted an Egyptian-dominated Arab League to be the principal defence organisation in the Near East, which might be informally associated with the United States.

Dulles told Eisenhower in May 1953 that the Arab states believed that the United States would back Israel in aggressive expansion, and that the prestige of Western democracy in the Middle East was very low. The immediate consequence was a new policy of "even-handedness" where the United States very publicly sided with the Arab states in disputes with Israel and Britain in 1953-55.