British Admiral Charles Napier reached an agreement with the Egyptian government, where the latter abandoned its claims to Syria and returned the Ottoman fleet in exchange of the recognition of Muhammad Ali and his sons as the only legitimate rulers of Egypt.

[4][5] The war was the climax of the long power-struggle between the Ottoman Empire and the Pasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, which had reached a point of crisis that threatened to destabilize the whole of the Levant.

[6] In June 1840, Admiral Sir Robert Stopford, commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet, sent Commodore Charles Napier with a small squadron to the Syrian (now the Lebanese) coast.

The situation on the ground was extremely volatile, and called for quick and decisive action; this Napier provided, acting as if his was an entirely independent command.

Open war broke out on September 11, when Napier bombarded Beirut and effected a landing at Jounieh with 1,500 Turks and Marines to operate against Ibrahim, who was prevented by the revolt from doing more than trying to hold the coastal cities.

The Mediterranean Fleet, commanded by Stopford, and supported by small Austrian and Turkish squadrons, moved into position against the western and southern sides of Acre on November 3-4 and opened fire at 14:00.

The rapid collapse of Muhammad Ali's power, with the prospect of bloody chaos in Egypt, was not part of the Allies' plan, and Stopford sent Napier to command the squadron at Alexandria and to observe the situation.

He renounced his claims over Crete and the Hijaz and agreed to downsize his naval forces and his standing army to 18,000 men if he and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan.

Muhammad Ali withdrew from Syria, the Hijaz, the Holy Land, Adana and Crete and handed back the Ottoman fleet.

Ecologist Andreas Malm marked the intervention as the pivotal event in the history of the Middle East and the climate system, suggesting that the British ability to project power led to the export of fossil fuel use across the world.

Malm argues that this aftermath laid the groundwork for the later Zionist movement and began the first conception of a Jewish state as a "satellite colony" that would forward the political and economic interests of the West in the Middle East, which through the 20th and 21st century have been intertwined with the petroleum industry.