On 11 October 1951, the Wafd government abrogated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which had given the British control over the Suez Canal until 1956. The popularity of this move, as well as that of government-sponsored guerrilla attacks against the British, put pressure on Nasser to act. According to Sadat, Nasser decided to wage "a large scale assassination campaign". In January 1952, he and Hassan Ibrahim attempted to kill the royalist general Hussein Sirri Amer by firing their submachine guns at his car as he drove through the streets of Cairo. Instead of killing the general, the attackers wounded an innocent female passerby. Nasser recalled that her wails "haunted" him and firmly dissuaded him from undertaking similar actions in the future.

What treaty did the Wafd government abrogate?