On July 22-23, 1952, a group of disaffected army officers led by Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew King Farouk, whom the military blamed for Egypt's poor performance in the 1948 war with Israel. Following a brief experiment with civilian rule, they abrogated the 1923 constitution and declared Egypt a republic on June 19, 1953. Nasser evolved into a charismatic leader, not only of Egypt but of the Arab world. Nasser and his "free officer" movement enjoyed almost instant legitimacy as liberators who had ended 2,500 years of foreign rule. They were motivated by numerous grievances and goals but wanted especially to break the economic and political power of the land-owning elite, to remove all vestiges of British control, and to improve the lot of the people, especially the fellahin (peasants). A secular nationalist, Nasser developed a foreign policy characterized by advocacy of pan-Arab socialism, leadership of the "nonaligned" of the "Third World," and close ties with the Soviet Union. He sharply opposed the Western-sponsored Baghdad Pact. When the United States held up military sales in reaction to Egyptian neutrality vis-a-vis Moscow, Nasser concluded an arms deal with Czechoslovakia in September 1955. When the U.S. and the World Bank withdrew their offer to help finance the Aswan High Dam in mid-1956, he nationalized the privately owned Suez Canal Company. The crisis that followed, exacerbated by growing tensions with Israel over guerrilla attacks from Gaza and Israeli reprisals, resulted in the invasion of Egypt that October by France, Britain, and Israel.