The 35-year to today's

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"The working classes of the ostensibly 'neutral' position on the Suez crisis, but it was due to other factors as well - to the fall of Iran's Mossadeq regime (in 1953) which had nationalised Anglo-Iranian Oil and its replacement by the CIA-backed Shah, and to the decline of British power.

'Arab socialism'

The US forged ever-closer links with the Zionist state.

But the process of US overlordship was patchy. Nasser moved 'leftwards' • The Egyptian state moved into closer alliance with the USSR. Nasser nationalised the bulk of manufacturing industry, imposed strict restrictions on exports and imports and proclaimed 'Arab socialism'. In: 1958, trumpeting the cause of Arab unity, Egypt united with Syria in the brief 'United Arab Republic' But inter-Arab conflicts proved more powerful than pan-Arab nationalist sentiment. the radical Qassem regime in Iraq refused to enter into the UAR. In 1961 Syria seceded. In Syria a radical wing of the Ba'ath (Resurrection) Party seized power. In Iraq Qassem was overthrown by a vehemently reactionary wing of the same party which, although itself overthrown in late 1963, was to regain power in even worse guise in 1968.

By the mid-1960s, the radical nationalist forces were losing momentum. The 'experiment' of Arab unity had been a miserable failure. In Egypt, the economy was grinding to a halt and Nasser's regime was bogged down in a military intervention in Yemen. To calm internal dissent - and, possibly more important at the time, criticism by other Arab regimes -Nasser's rhetorical anti-Zionism became more frenzied. In Syria, too, the regime verbally championed the rights of the Palestinians.

The house of cards collapsed in June 1967 when the Israeli airforce destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian armies in six days, opening up a whole new tion in the Middle East.

Whilst the humiliated nationalists fumbled for a way out of the impasse they faced, three vital new factors entered the regional equation.

*Firstly, the US-Israeli alliance developed even more strongly. Before that, Israel was strategically important to imperialism. Since then it has been pumped with more arms by the US than any other country in the world.

*Secondly, the Palestinians became an independent force in the conflict.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), originally created as an Egyptian stooge, was taken over and transformed by radical guerrilla forces of a qualitatively different character to the old-style Nasserite and Ba'athist nationalists. Chief among these was Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat.

*Thirdly, the conservative monarchies of the oil states took on more significance as economically-ravaged Egypt was forced to drop its revolutionary rhetoric and look to them - and especially Saudi Arabia — for financial support.

Under the impact of the 1967 defeat and in face of the growing political weight of the oil states, the Arab regimes shifted right.