of Middle East Land Forces. He moved with his family to a new residence at Fayed, on the shores of the Bitter Lakes. The theatre had been a primarily British responsibility in both world wars, and was still considered such by the United States, which was reluctant to assume commitments beyond those it had already undertaken in Europe and the Far East, but Britain no longer had the resources to defend it. The contingency plan for a Soviet invasion of the Middle East, codenamed Celery, involved defending the Suez Canal by making a stand in the Lebanon-Israel-Jordan area. Robertson was not convinced that it was practical. The rise of Mohammad Mosaddegh prompted Robertson to prepare a plan for intervention in Iran to protect employees of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The plan was not implemented, and the employees left peacefully. Another trouble spot was Egypt, where the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 was due to expire in 1956, and British troops would then have to leave Egypt. This, the British were reluctant to do, as the protection of the lines of communication between Europe and the Far East, and access to the oil resources of the Middle East were still regarded as vital to the security of the United Kingdom. The British government wanted to retain the base in the Suez Canal area, or, failing that, permission to return in the event of war in the Middle East. Whereas Egyptians saw the British presence not as protection against a Soviet threat but as continuation of a colonial occupation. For his part, Robertson saw the strategy of the British Chiefs of Staff of halting a Soviet advance into the Middle East on Israel's coastal plain from a base on the Suez Canal as totally impractical, and pressed for one of holding the Turkish and Iranian mountain passes instead. Robertson attempted to resolve his problems with diplomacy, but in October 1951 the Prime Minister of Egypt, Mostafa El-Nahas, announced the abrogation of the 1936 treaty, and the British government began to accept that it would have to leave Egypt. For his services, he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 1952 New Year Honours. Robertson was also an aide-de-camp to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II from 1949 to June 1952. He was Colonel Commandant of the Royal Engineers from 1950 to 1953, and of the