The Free Officers ( ) were a group of nationalist officers in the armed forces of Egypt and Sudan that instigated the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Originally established in 1945 as a cell within the Muslim Brotherhood under Abdel Moneim Abdel Raouf, which included Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hussein Hamouda, Khaled Mohieddin, Kamal el-Din Hussein, Salah Naṣr, Abdel Hakim Amer, and Sa’ad Tawfiq, it operated as a clandestine movement of junior officers during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Muhammad Naguib joined the Free Officers in 1949, after the war, and became their official leader during the turmoil leading up the revolution because of the hero status he had earned during the war, and his influence in the army.