With Maude having taken Baghdad (11 March 1917), the Turks having withdrawn from Persia and been chased out of Medina by the Arabs, and Murray having made an apparently successful attack at Gaza (26 March), Robertson asked the War Cabinet (30 March) for permission to order Murray to renew his offensive. Initial reports turned out to have been exaggerated, and a subsequent attack (17–19 April 1917) also failed. This coincided with the failure of the Nivelle Offensive, reports of unrest among Russian troops after the February Revolution and an escalation of the U-Boat War (it was thought that loss of shipping might make Egypt untenable) causing Robertson to prefer a return to a defensive policy in the Middle East.