Analysts and historians are finding parallels between Britain's Prime Minister Anthony Eden's Suez crisis in October 1956 and the US President Doanld Trump's February 28, 2026 move on Iran. Then, Britain and France attacked Egypt to open the Suez Canal for foreign ships. The 1956 move was by the US President Dwight D Eisenhower who faced elections a few days later. The move turned out to be disastrous for Britain; Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned while Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser became a hero of anti-colonialism. Suez became shorthand for the moment that Britain, exhausted by the Second World War (1939-1945), gave way as a global power to the United States. This time around, China may replace America as the most important global power.

The two-week ceasefire brokered by China and Pakistan leaves the Islamic Republic of Iran in place and still in command of the future of the Strait of Hormuz, with the country's nuclear stockpile and ballistic missile programme unresolved.

"The Iran war had challenged Washington's argument that its global primacy was vital to the safety of international trade and the world order that was built after the end of the Second World War," wrote Steven Erlandserr in an assessment of the situation published by The New York Times on April 10, 2016. Quoting from an assessment by Bruno Mcaeas, former secretary of state for European Affairs for Portugal, he wrote that for the rest of the world, the war is "starting to look........

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