In July 1956, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, seizing back the waterway Britain and France had controlled for decades. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, convinced Nasser must be stopped, secretly conspires with French Premier Guy Mollet and Israel to engineer a pretext for invasion, sending troops to retake the canal by force. The film traces how the plan unravels almost immediately: the United States refuses to back the operation, the United Nations condemns it, and a run on the pound forces Britain's hand. Eden, his health and credibility failing, is compelled to withdraw troops within weeks, ending his premiership and, with it, any illusion that Britain could still act as a great power without Washington's consent. Nasser, meanwhile, comes out of the crisis as a hero across the Arab world. The film treats the episode as the moment Britain's imperial self-image collided with a new global order, and traces how the failure hardened divisions between Egypt and Israel that outlasted the crisis itself.