Nicholas Hammond provides an account of a little known Strategic Operations Executive intervention in the Middle East. In the summer of 1940, when Italy joined Germany, it was clear that attacks on the British position in the Middle East might be made from Italian bases in Africa and in Rhodes and other islands of the Dodecanese. British military forces in Egypt forces in Egypt faced Libya. The situation in Syria and Palestine was precarious. These areas were administered under a League of Nations Mandate by France and by Britain respectively.