The year 2016 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Suez crisis. Proposing a metaphor of a chain of hypothetical propositions, this article examines the construction of national interests through a case study of the Suez crisis. This metaphor offers a useful way to step back from common sense and to think of Britain’s official representation of “the Suez crisis” as numerous antecedents and consequents coupled together. It then enables researchers to: (1) detect each individual proposition hidden in plain sight through the identification of inference indicators; (2) examine the actual truth or falsity of each individual proposition; (3) see a striking parallel between the deduction of one proposition from another and the construction of national interests; and (4) apprehend why valid yet false inferences obtained by pure deduction could appear as incontrovertible truths even in the absence of empirical foundations.

KEYWORDS: National interests, language, a chain of hypothetical propositions, deductive reasoning, discourse analysis