The grim events in the Middle East recall, with some irony, two approaching anniversaries. Seventy years ago, Western powers co-operated with Israel to attack a troublesome neighbour; and 65 years ago, the United States was making growing threats against a Middle Eastern country with an illicit nuclear weapon programme.

The difference is that, in 1956, the attackers were Britain and France and it was the United States who pressured us into stopping and withdrawing from the Suez war with Egypt. And it was Israel in 1962 and 1963 that was facing US ultimatums to let observers examine whether it was developing an illicit nuclear bomb.

There will be plenty of events, articles and documentaries this year highlighting the Suez anniversary.

From the British (and French) Governments’ perspective, there seemed to be a legal and moral justification. In October 1954 Britain had agreed with Egypt’s revolutionary Government to withdraw its troops from the Canal Zone, where they had been for decades, and for the Canal Company to be transferred to the Egyptian Government by 1968.

Meanwhile Egypt, in a role similar Iran’s more recently, had been promoting Arab fedayeen – non state guerrilla — attacks on Israel from Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza in 1954 and 1955. Israel had retaliated with a large-scale raid on Gaza and was planning a bigger attack on Egypt. France had developed close links with Israel and hostility to Egypt’s president Nasser.

Nasser’s Egypt was helping nationalist forces in French North Africa, especially in Algeria, where France was fighting a bloody war of colonial retreat. Israel, with its recent influx of North African Jews, was helping France, particularly with relevant local intelligence.

When Nasser unexpectedly abandoned his recent agreement with Britain and nationalised the Canal in July 1956, Prime Minister Eden’s intended military response appeared to align neatly with the French-Israeli plans to attack Egypt. It was not until October 1956 that the British discovered that these plans had already been developed, potentially without British participation. The extent of Israeli involvement was kept secret, more or less successfully, for years afterwards.

The US under president Eisenhower, disapproved of the whole venture. They promoted a negotiated solution in the United Nations. Once the British-French attack on Egypt began on 31 October, the US tightened pressure on Britain more directly: they blocked a British request for financial support from the IMF and then began selling off their holdings of British sterling bonds, putting unsustainable pressure on the pound. The UK declared a ceasefire on 6 November: British, French and Israeli forces all withdrew from territory seized within months.

The nuclear story is less well known. The comparisons and contrasts with current events are more startling. It has familiar elements: president Kennedy’s threatened severe sanctions if American inspectors weren’t allowed access to suspected nuclear sites; there were deadlines and missed deadlines; and apparent deception. The unexpected twist is that the country concerned was Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, had pushed to develop nuclear weapons since Independence in 1948. French and Israeli scientists worked closely in the 1950s on advanced nuclear weapons technology.

Most of this was done without the knowledge, let alone support, of the US. De Gaulle, in power from 1958, opposed the French-Israeli nuclear alliance and tried to stop at least plutonium reprocessing.

Under Israeli pressure, he agreed to let this wind down slowly until the mid-1960s. But Kennedy’s administration became aware of Israel’s nuclear progress, particularly the processing of weapons grade plutonium.

In 1963, soon after successfully stopping the arrival of Soviet nuclear weapons to Cuba, Kennedy demanded access by American inspectors to suspected processing sites in Israel. Ben-Gurion, still PM, responded with a mix of denials and prevarication. Kennedy’s letters became tougher. One made clear that American “commitment to and support of Israel” could be “seriously jeopardised” if the proposed six-monthly visits programme was not agreed.

Ben-Gurion abruptly resigned, for reasons still obscure; and the argument continued. Kennedy’s letter to his successor Levi Eshkol, dated July 4, 1963, had two lines of congratulations before two pages of pressure on nuclear issues. An intensified pattern of ultimatums from Kennedy, deadlines and delays continued – until Kennedy’s assassination later that year.

President Johnson kept up the same position, but Vietnam and civil rights increasingly claimed his attention. Agreed inspection visits were put off successfully until the Dimona nuclear plant had gone critical. Even then the extent of progress made was successfully hidden from US inspectors.

Gradually, Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, still not formally acknowledged, though confirmed by whistleblowers, has become awkwardly accepted, unchallenged by the West, but slightly embarrassing. But it has been curious in recent years to see the Israelis, still a non-declared nuclear state outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s structures, leading the attack – literally – against a fellow non-compliant Middle East state in the name of nuclear responsibility. The Americans are now their collaborators, with restrained, tight-lipped disapproval from France and Britain.

There is a further parallel. I remember spending ten days in still-communist Hungary in 1977. To my surprise, as a relatively innocent British student, I was regularly attacked for British behaviour over Suez 21 years earlier. We had distracted the world when it should have focused on the Soviet invasion there.

Today, the events in Gaza and the actions against Iran distract the world from Russia’s war on Ukraine. (And Hungary’s leader is less disapproving of Russian invasions).

I don’t draw any moral from these contrasts. The parallels and the dramatically changed roles of different players are, at the least, interesting. But it is sobering that in 1956 almost all those involved claimed with varying plausibility to be upholding international law.

Today, the leaders of two of the players have been indicted by the international courts for trial as possible war criminals; and the president of another has said that the only international law he recognises is his own morality. The players have taken different positions on the board. But with the safeguards weaker and the rules less obvious, the dangers may be greater.

• George Fergusson was the Governor of Bermuda from 2012 to 2016 and is now a retired senior British diplomat who writes on foreign affairs. This article is reproduced by arrangement with The Herald in Glasgow, where it first appeared