The goal of the policy was to reduce the influence in the Middle East of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser because he seemed to be leaning in favor of the Soviet Union and he failed to provide the leadership that Dulles and Eisenhower had desired toward settling the Arab-Israeli conflict.
[5] Nasser viewed the proposed project, which would offer benefits of increasing arable land and providing cheap electrical energy to the Egyptian people, as a high priority.
[10] (4) Finally, Nasser refused to cooperate with a joint American-British secret peace plan named Alpha, which aimed to convince Egyptian and Israeli leaders to end hostilities through mutual concessions.
[12] Instead of its hitherto-friendly policy of appeasement and aid, the administration formulated a set of measures, drawn up by the State Department, that sought to undermine Nasser and reduce Egypt’s influence in the region.
The overarching purpose was to effect a reorientation of Nasser’s policies toward cooperation with the West while diminishing what were seen as his harmful attempts to influence other Middle East countries.
[15] State Department analysis, produced on the same day as the presentation of the OMEGA Memorandum, clarified that the first phase of the plan was designed to warn Nasser that he was in danger of earning the hostility of the Western powers while still allowing for the possibility that he could return “to the fold without too much loss of face.”[16] These measures were to be implemented immediately and last until approximately the end of April 1956.
[20] During this phase, efforts would be made to support an alternate Arab leader to replace Nasser, with King Saud of Saudi Arabia considered a favorite contender for this role by Eisenhower.
[25] America’s opposition to Nasser became public on July 19, 1956, when Dulles informed the Egyptian ambassador that the United States would not support the Aswan Dam project.
[27] In retaliation, on July 26, 1956, Nasser gave a speech in which, using the pre-arranged code name “de Lesseps,” he ordered assault teams to seize offices of the Suez Maritime Canal Company.
In August 1956, the administration sent former Undersecretary of Defense Robert Anderson to meet with the Saudi regime in an attempt to secure an alternate to Nasser as leader of the Arab world.