The Guardian reports: Egypt’s presidential office has not appointed Mohamed ElBaradei as interim prime minister despite an earlier announcement that he would be sworn in on Saturday night.

The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency had been widely expected to take up his post three days after the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi.

Speculation had been rife for several days that ElBaradei would head the transitional government alongside the acting president, Adly Mansour.

But the presidential office backed away from an earlier announcement that the pro-reform leader would be installed.

Ahmed el-Musilamani, a spokesman for Mansour, told the media that consultations were continuing, denying that the appointment of the Nobel Peace laureate was ever certain.

However, reporters gathered at the presidential palace were ushered into a room where they were told by officials to wait for the president who would arrive shortly to announce ElBaradei’s appointment.

A senior opposition official, Munir Fakhry Abdelnur, said that the reversal was because the ultra-conservative Salafi al-Nour party objected to the appointment and mediation was underway.

Al Ahram reports: Early on Sunday prominent writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal met interim president Adly Mansour to discuss “the current political situation,” according to Egypt’s presidency.

“Heikal advised the president appoint an economic figure to the post,” a presidential source tells Ahram Online.

Egyptian Central Bank Governor Hisham Ramez, assigned to his post earlier in the year by now-ousted president Mohamed Morsi, remains the highest contender for the job after ElBaradie. Ramez, a career banker with a solid reputation for “progressive” economic choices and with considerable inroads in the international financial and economic scene, is said to be favoured by General El-Sisi, head of the Armed Forces.

According to the sources who spoke to Ahram Online, General El-Sisi is keen to have the man entrusted and appointed by Morsi to send a message of inclusion to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, who has reacted with ire to the ouster of their presidential candidate.

Ramez, according to official and independent economic sources, is also the contender with the widest recommendations from within the business community. His choice as premier is also perceived by the advisors to Interim President Adly Mansour, as well as those to El-Sisi, as sending “a strong message of stable investment policies” — something said to be “particularly crucial at the moment where Egypt is keen to attract as much investment as possible.”

Al Ahram reports: Prominent politician Mohamed ElBaradei is to be appointed Egypt’s new prime minister under interim President Adly Mansour, according to Constitution Party founder Khaled Daoud.

According to Daoud, ElBaradei will be sworn in before Adly at 20:00 CMT.

Nobel peace prize laureate ElBaradei had been a leading opposition figure since the 2011 revolution, having been one of the most prominent figures to foresee and call for the uprising that put an end to the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.

He initially had the intention to run in last year’s presidential elections, but backtracked on his decision months ahead of the polls saying there were no guarantees that elections would be fair.

During the transitional period under interim military rule, ElBaradei grew critical of the policies of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn had accused him of being a US “agent.”

Recalling the U.S. president’s 2009 speech in Cairo, Robert Fisk notes: Obama made the following remarkable comment, which puts the events in Egypt today into a rather interesting perspective. There were some leaders, he said, “who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others…you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.”

Obama did not say this in the aftermath of the coup-that-wasn’t. He uttered these very words in Egypt itself just over four years ago. And it pretty much sums up what Mohamed Morsi did wrong. He treated his Muslim Brotherhood mates as masters rather than servants of the people, showed no interest in protecting Egypt’s Christian minority, and then enraged the Egyptian army by attending a Brotherhood meeting at which Egyptians were asked to join the holy war in Syria to kill Shiites and overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

And there is one salient fact about the events of the last 48 hours in Egypt. No one is happier – no one more satisfied nor more conscious of the correctness of his own national struggle against ‘Islamists’ and ‘terrorists’ — than Assad. The West has been wetting itself to destroy Assad – but does absolutely nothing when the Egyptian army destroys its democratically-elected president for lining up with Assad’s armed Islamist opponents. The army called Morsi’s supporters “terrorists and fools”. Isn’t that just what Bashar calls his enemies? No wonder Assad told us yesterday that no one should use religion to gain power. Hollow laughter here — offstage, of course.

But this doesn’t let Obama off the hook. Those Western leaders who are gently telling us that Egypt is still on the path to “democracy”, that this is an “interim” period – like the ‘interim’ Egyptian government concocted by the military – and that millions of Egyptians support the coup that isn’t a coup, have to remember that Morsi was indeed elected in a real, Western-approved election. Sure, he won only 51 per cent — or 52 per cent — of the vote.

But did George W. Bush really win his first presidential election? Morsi certainly won a greater share of the popular vote than David Cameron. We can say that Morsi lost his mandate when he no longer honoured his majority vote by serving the majority of Egyptians. But does that mean that European armies must take over their countries whenever European prime ministers fall below 50 per cent in their public opinion polls?

Obama’s approval rating currently stands at 45%, but as yet there are no indications the Pentagon is making any preparations to replace him.

Evan Hill writes: [T]here were signs in Friday’s protests that the coup, though it arrived on an unprecedented wave of popular support, had inspired anger beyond the insular Brotherhood and Islamist social networks. Some who came to the Republican Guards compound said that they were not Brotherhood members or committed Morsy partisans but simply angry that their votes had been usurped. They complained that Morsy had been hamstrung by uncooperative opposition parties and subversive ministries that laid traps to make governing impossible. Some pointed with suspicion to the rolling blackouts, petrol shortages and panic over the availability of basic foodstuffs that had wracked the nation in the weeks leading up to June 30. They noted with dark irony that the crises had suddenly stopped since Morsy’s fall — though many economic problems were likely to continue under any new government.

“We went down for five elections: [including] the People’s Assembly, the Shoura Council, a referendum, presidential, and in the end, the military council…threw them in the trash,” said Ahmed Hassan, the 35-year-old owner of an IT company.

Hassan claimed the June 30 protests had been fueled by an alliance of Christians, liberals and Mubarak regime sympathizers who could not abide the idea of an Islamist president. Others said they believed the demonstrators were mostly young people who had been brainwashed by an array of hostile television netwokrs. Some pointed out that almost none of the independent stations continued to cover protests in support of Morsy following the coup.

Hassan argued that one year had hardly been enough time for Morsy’s administration to correct Egypt’s path, after three decades under Mubarak. Whatever mistakes Morsy had made, his supporters argued, were the result of a conniving bureaucracy packed with Mubarak holdovers — hardly justification for the undemocratic removal of Egypt’s first elected president.

“Why do the liberals who talk about democracy not respond with democracy? They did it by force, why?” Hassan asked. [Continue reading…]

Tewfik Aclimandos, an associate researcher at the College de France in Paris, who specialises in the Egyptian military, told the Financial Times that within the military there was a fear that Morsi would remove the the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and put former army leaders on trial.

“I am almost certain the military did not want to intervene, but I think a decision was taken in March or maybe a month or two ago that if conditions were right they would step in,” Aclimandos said. “They were going to wait for a pretext. A trusted source told me if there was good mobilisation [by protesters on June 30] they would move.”

Aclimandos also said officers feared Morsi’s close ties with Hamas could drag Egypt into a war with Israel.

The New York Times reports: Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat and Egypt’s most prominent liberal, said Thursday that he had worked hard to convince Western powers of what he called the necessity of forcibly ousting President Mohamed Morsi, contending that Mr. Morsi had bungled the country’s transition to an inclusive democracy.

In an interview, Mr. ElBaradei also defended the widening arrests of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and the shutdown of Islamist television networks that followed the removal of Mr. Morsi on Wednesday by Egypt’s generals.

“The security people obviously are worried — there was an earthquake and we have to make sure that the tremors are predicted and controlled,” he said.

“They are taking some precautionary measures to avoid violence; well, this is something that I guess they have to do as a security measure,” he said. “But nobody should be detained or arrested in anticipation unless there is a clear accusation, and it has to be investigated by the attorney general and settled in a court.”

Mr. ElBaradei, whose precise role in the interim government that is replacing Mr. Morsi’s is still unclear, vowed to ensure that “everybody who is being rounded up or detained, it is by order of the attorney general — and being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood is no crime.”

In tandem with the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi, the judicial authorities replaced the attorney general he had appointed, reinstating the prosecutor installed by Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic president ousted in Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

The Mubarak appointee, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, spent years in office prosecuting Islamists. But Mr. ElBaradei said the generals had assured him that this time would be different because they intended to operate as an institution in a civilian democracy, with respect for due process and the rule of law. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Egyptian cities were left strewn with rocks, glass and bullet casings on Saturday morning after almost 24 hours of violence which left 30 dead and more than 1,100 injured.

Clashes erupted on Friday night between supporters and opponents of ousted president Mohamed Morsi in central Cairo and other cities across Egypt , as fears of an expected backlash against his removal materialised.

Fighting broke out shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie – reported to have been arrested on Thursday – appeared unexpectedly at a rally in east Cairo on Friday evening to tell his followers to remain on the streets until Morsi’s return. The ousted president had once been a senior member of the Islamist party.

In Cairo, a crowd of close to 5,000 Morsi supporters crossed the Nile over the 6 October Bridge, near the hub of opposition dissent, Tahrir Square. Turning left towards Maspero, the state television centre, they were approached by anti-Morsi demonstrators and fighting broke out in the streets.

Similar scenes were also reported in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, and there were reports of skirmishes in Luxor in the south of the country. The Sinai peninsula was placed on a state of emergency after an attack by gunmen on a local airport. There were also clashes reported in Damanhour, in Egypt’s north-east, and Beni Suef, in the south, as Islamists protested across the country at Morsi’s removal – in what the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups had billed as a “day of rejection”.

Shadi Hamid writes: When Mohamed Morsi became Egypt’s first democratically elected president last year, it was an especially sweet victory for the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s oldest and most influential Islamist movement. After a long history of repression, the Brotherhood had finally tasted triumph. But their short-lived rule ended Wednesday when Egypt’s army deposed Mr. Morsi.

The Brotherhood’s fall will have profound implications for the future of political Islam, reverberating across the region in potentially dangerous ways. One of the most important political developments of recent years was the decision of Islamist parties to make peace with democracy and commit to playing by the rules of the political game. Leaders counseled patience to their followers. Their time would come, they were told.

Now supporters of the Brotherhood will ask, with good reason, whether democracy still has anything to offer them. Mr. Morsi’s removal will breathe new life into the ideological claims of radicals. Al Qaeda and its followers have long argued that change can’t come through the democracy of “unbelievers”; violence is the only path. As the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri once said, “What is truly regrettable is the rallying of thousands of duped Muslim youth in voter queues before ballot boxes instead of lining them up to fight in the cause of Allah.”

Al Qaeda’s intellectual forebears emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and were shaped by events that bear an eerie similarity to those of this week. In 1954, a popularly backed Egyptian Army moved against the Muslim Brotherhood, arresting thousands and dismantling the organization. Prison had a radicalizing effect on Sayyid Qutb, a leading Brotherhood ideologue, who experienced torture at the hands of his captors before being executed in 1966. Many of Mr. Qutb’s followers later left the Brotherhood’s embrace and went their own way, setting up militant organizations that would begin perpetrating acts of terrorism.

In 1954, no one could have guessed that the brutal crackdown against the Brotherhood would set in motion a chain of events that would have terrible consequences for the region and America. [Continue reading…]

Wendell Steavenson writes: The crowds on the street in Egypt over the past days have been overwhelming — they have numbered in the millions. Waving flags and tooting whistles, trumpeting vuvuzelas, drumming and shouting and chanting and honking and singing — Tahrir reached such a noisy level of jubilation that people were joking, “Did Egypt win the World Cup?” Walking among them, dodging fireworks, it felt upside down: a popular protest to oust President Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was democratically elected, in which, since Monday, the military has taken the side of the protesters. From one perspective, what is happening in Egypt represents an extraordinary repudiation of political Islam. From another, it is an outright military coup — a repudiation of the process of politics itself. Whatever the air of joyousness, dozens of people have died across the country. The danger did not dissipate with the announcement by the military, on Wednesday night, that Morsi was not President any longer and that the Constitution had been suspended.

The crowd in Tahrir has been varied: families, including women; people with prayer calluses and Afros, some wearing plastic sandals and others Gucci sunglasses; farmers and accountants. But there’s no doubt that there are many from the middle-class “couch party”: people who were more or less O.K. with Mubarak, who tend to trust the Army, and who had not been out to protest before. Police were hoisted onto shoulders. Overhead, military helicopters dropped flags for the cheering masses. On TV — the military had taken control of state media — aerial footage of the immense throngs played on a loop to a soundtrack of martial victory music.

On Monday, Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the Head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, issued an ultimatum: the two sides, government and opposition, had forty-eight hours to come up with a compromise plan or else the military would step in with its own “roadmap.” The crowds on the street went wild, taking it as a sign that they had already won. But this was also very clearly a coup. (Twitter captured the national sense of humor — only Egyptians could announce a coup forty-eight hours in advance!) As much as the generals say they are honoring the will of the people, they engineered a showdown, and got one. The Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters, if outnumbered, were also gathering in the streets. Among the anti-Morsi crowds that kept coming, to fill practically every square and intersection in the country, people seemed to think that the Army was not like it had been before, that it was not the Army of Hosni Mubarak and military trials. Sisi would not “sit on the chair” — that is, take the throne.

Morsi addressed the nation at 11:30 P.M. on Tuesday. He spoke with passion, sometimes with anger, and he was defiant. He used the word “legitimacy” so many times that it began to sound like a fist thumping on the table. He reiterated that he was democratically elected — and that was that. It was the feloul, he said, the remnants of the old régime and the deep state, who were taking advantage of the protests for their own schemes. He complained that the bad economy — a major complaint against him — was the fault of the previous government. He might have been right about all of that. But he did not directly address the public’s grievances, other than with a brief aside about a possible reconciliation committee or amendments to the Constitution and getting the youth involved. None of that was new: the opposition — itself fractious and divided — has thrown up its hands at these kind of pluralistic assurances. He did not mention the protests. It was as if he was living in a parallel universe, shut in a room where his own arguments bounced off the walls and echoed back to him. [Continue reading…]

Video, apparently showing Morsi’s arrest yesterday — this being the nature of a coup: those in high office get arrested for being in high office and then some bogus ‘crimes’ get discovered. Morsi is now being accused of having ‘insulted’ the judiciary:

Reuters reports: Egyptian judicial authorities opened an investigation on Thursday into accusations that deposed President Mohamed Mursi and 15 other Islamists had insulted the judiciary, investigating judge Tharwat Hammad said, imposing a travel ban on all of them.

It was second formal order banning Mursi from leaving the country since the military removed the Muslim Brotherhood politician from power on Wednesday.

Nathan Brown writes: The final, desperate hours of Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian president ousted by the military on Wednesday, were in one sense merciful, but also pathetic. After a brief feint that called to mind the image of Salvadore Allende picking up a gun to defend his presidency, Morsi resorted instead to a series of increasingly desperate verbal signals, including ineffectual crises about his own legitimacy and attempts to grasp expired offers of compromise. The result made him seem less like a martyr than a property owner waving his deed at a wrecking-ball operator who has already destroyed his home.

Waving that deed—or, less metaphorically, attempting to fall back on constitutional text and electoral legitimacy—would have much to persuade a neutral observer if any such creature still exists. Yes, it is true that the Brotherhood did well in elections; that it was not able to govern fully but still saddled with responsibility for Egypt’s insurmountable problems; that important state actors never accepted its authority; that its opposition was unified only by a desire to make the Brotherhood fail; and that Egypt’s rumor mill transformed preposterous rumor into established fact with breathtaking speed.

But it is also undeniable that Morsi and the Brotherhood made almost every conceivable mistake—including some (such as reaching too quickly for political power or failing to build coalitions with others) that they had vowed they knew enough to avoid. They alienated potential allies, ignored rising discontent, focused more on consolidating their rule than on using what tools they did have, used rhetoric that was tone deaf at best and threatening at worst. Had they hired a consultant from the Nixon White House, they would have done a more credible job, at least by being efficient.

The Morsi presidency is without a doubt one of the most colossal failures in the Brotherhood’s history. What lesson will the movement learn from it, if any?

In studying Islamist movements over the last decade, I generally found that the most rewarding time to speak to leaders was about a year or so after an election. During the heat of the political battle, they made decisions like most politicians do (on the fly, often overreacting to yesterday’s headlines) and spoke like most politicians do (providing glib spin than reflective analysis). But at calmer moments, they spoke less like politicians and more openly. And there was a reason why: The movements prided themselves (justifiably) on an ability to learn. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The United States declined on Wednesday to criticize Egypt’s military, even as it was ousting Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi from power.

Minutes before Egypt’s army commander announced that Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been deposed and the constitution suspended, the U.S. State Department criticized Mursi, but gave no public signal it was opposed to the army’s action.

Asked whether the Egyptian army had the legitimacy to remove Mursi from power, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “We’re not taking sides in this.”

The muted U.S. response – at least thus far – to the dramatic events in Cairo suggested that Washington may be willing to accept the military’s move as a way of ending a political crisis that has paralyzed Egypt, a long-time U.S. ally.

Still, the distant attitude toward Mursi, who has come under U.S. criticism in recent days, could open up President Barack Obama to complaints he has not supported democracy in the Arab world.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House or the State Department to the military’s announcement that it was installing a technocratic government to eventually be followed by new elections.

Those at Tahrir Square got what they wanted, but do they want what they will get? Only time will tell

— Mtoto Mzuri (@Mme_Adeola) July 3, 2013

The New York Times reports: A top adviser to President Mohamed Morsi issued an open letter Wednesday afternoon lamenting what he called the imminent takeover of Egypt’s first freely elected government.

“As I write these lines I am fully aware that these may be the last lines I get to post on this page,” the adviser, Essam el-Haddad, wrote on his Facebook page. “For the sake of Egypt and for historical accuracy, let’s call what is happening by its real name: Military coup.”

Mr. Haddad and his family went to the streets two years ago to help oust former President Hosni Mubarak, he wrote. “We stood, and we still stand, for a very simple idea: given freedom, we Egyptians can build institutions that allow us to promote and choose among all the different visions for the country. We quickly discovered that almost none of the other actors were willing to extend that idea to include us,” he wrote, charging that the opposition and bureaucracy had refused to collaborate with elected leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Today only one thing matters,” he wrote. “In this day and age no military coup can succeed in the face of sizable popular force without considerable bloodshed. Who among you is ready to shoulder that blame?”

And he warned with new force that the president’s Islamist supporters would not go quietly. “Hundreds of thousands of them have gathered in support of democracy and the Presidency,” he wrote. “And they will not leave in the face of this attack. To move them, there will have to be violence. It will either come from the army, the police, or the hired mercenaries. Either way there will be considerable bloodshed.” [Continue reading…]

Magdi Abdelhadi writes: There was no way this could end well. Mohamed Morsi and his supporters thought God was on their side, and their opponents concluded that they were up against religious fascists who would turn Egypt into another Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The hyperbole reflects an intensely polarised society and highly charged political atmosphere, where the voice of reason and moderation has been drowned out by the clamour for jihad on one side and for the military to rescue the country on the other.

Morsi clearly thought his speech last night (most probably his last) would be perceived as a heroic stand for democracy. Instead, it was seen by the people he most needed to persuade of his sincerity as a coded message to his most militant followers to unleash war on their fellow Egyptians, viewed as “enemies of the true faith”.

Reactions on social media were almost instantaneous as he delivered his speech on state television, word by word and gesture by gesture. Many were angry that the army had not prevented this man from delivering a speech that in their eyes amounted to incitement to violence. His readiness to die in defence of legitimacy (a word he uttered nearly 200 times) was interpreted as the code word for action by Muslim Brotherhood activists against their political enemies. Instead, it was his supporters near Cairo university who came under attack, and 16 were killed overnight. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Egypt’s armed forces would suspend the constitution and dissolve an Islamist-dominated parliament under a draft political roadmap to be pursued if Islamist President Mohamed Mursi and his opponents fail to reach a power-sharing agreement by Wednesday, military sources said.

The sources told Reuters the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was still discussing details of the plan, intended to resolve a political crisis that has brought millions of protesters into the streets. The roadmap could be changed based on political developments and consultations.

Chief-of-staff General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi called in a statement on Monday for Mursi to agree within 48 hours on power-sharing with other political forces, saying the military would otherwise set out its own roadmap for the country’s future.

MENA reports: Diplomats and their families are leaving Cairo as the grace period the army gave to political powers to resolve the current impasse draws to a close, state-run news agency MENA reports.

Flights to and from Cairo have also decreased.

Diplomatic staff left the country on civilian flights or private jets dispatched by their home countries, while security intensified in departure and arrival halls.

Over 200 American families from the embassy’s staff left Cairo on more than 15 flights.

Among them, the husband of the US ambassador, the wife of the Turkish ambassador and his two sons, and 22 of the embassy’s staff who headed to Istanbul.

The New York Times reports: Brushing aside a military ultimatum and his deepening isolation, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt declared on Tuesday that he was the legitimate leader of the country and blamed the spiraling and violent national crisis on what he repeatedly called the corrupt “remnants of the former regime” overthrown in the 2011 revolution.

In an emotional and rambling speech broadcast live on state television that extended past midnight into Wednesday morning, Mr. Morsi called on both his supporters and opponents to put aside their disagreements and unite behind him, and and hinted strongly that the country could fall into chaos if they did not.

“I am the president of Egypt,” Mr. Morsi said, invoking again and again what he called his constitutional mandate to remain in power.

“The remnants of the former regime, they are fighting against our democracy,” he said, referring to the toppled government of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. “If they come back to the people they will be rejected. They are accustomed to corruption, rigging elections sucking dry the blood of the people.” He added: “They cannot thrive in democracy.”

It was Mr. Morsi’s most extensive rebuttal to the growing calls on him to resign from an ever-widening spectrum of the Egyptian population after a year-long tenure that has been riven with turmoil and growing disenchantment with him and his Islamist supporters.

Mr. Morsi also demanded that the Egyptian military rescind its ultimatum against him, which his supporters have described as the prelude to a military coup.

Mr. Morsi’s defiant message came amid a new outbreak of armed and lethal political violence as protesters massed to call for his ouster. As the clock ticked on the military’s two-day ultimatum for the president to ease the crisis, high-ranking aides abandoned him and dozens of his s supporters were hit by birdshot. At least seven people were reported killed. [Continue reading…]

Laura Rozen reports: The White House on Tuesday pushed back on a report that American officials are urging Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi to call early elections, in response to the largest anti-government demonstrations Egypt has ever witnessed. The comments seem intended to reduce any perception that Washington is trying to dictate any particular course of action to the Egyptian leadership.

“It is not accurate that the United States is ‘urging’ President Morsy to call early elections,” National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in an e-mail Tuesday to Al-Monitor.

“President Obama has encouraged President Morsy to take steps to show that he is responsive to the concerns of the Egyptian people and underscored that the current crisis can only be resolved through a political process,” Meehan continued. “As the President has made clear since the revolution, only Egyptians can make the decisions that will determine their future.”

The White House comment, responding to a CNN report Tuesday, didn’t seem to rule out that US officials may be discussing the option of early elections with Egyptian officials behind closed doors.

“We are saying to him, ‘Figure out a way to go for new elections,’” a senior US official told CNN. “That may be the only way that this confrontation can be resolved.”

Al-Monitor reports: As millions of protesters converged on the streets of Egypt on June 30 to peacefully yet boisterously demand the downfall of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohammed Morsi, deadly clashes broke out in several spots across the volatile nation. Around midnight, the Muslim Brotherhood’s international headquarters, located in Cairo’s upscale Moqattam district, was in flames.

The six-story building declared as the Muslim Brotherhood General Center in 2011 — after decades of underground operations and being hunted down by Hosni Mubarak, Anwar Sadat, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s security — was attacked by dozens of rock- and Molotov cocktail-hurling protesters. The attacks ensued despite the obvious security precautions taken by the Brotherhood youth over the past week: they covered the building’s windows with street-war like sandbags, chain-locked the gates, wielded their weapons and bunkered inside.

As massive clouds of smoke blew out of the iconic Guidance Bureau of the worldwide organization, the movement’s disciplined, listen-and-obey youth continued to fire live ammunition at the assaulters. No more Brotherhood reinforcements arrived at the burning headquarters, and armored vehicles of the Interior Ministry stood watching from a distance, a clear message that the police would no longer protect the ruling clique.

Eight anti-Morsi protesters were killed by live bullets, mostly to the head and neck, and more than 35 were wounded by live rounds and birdshot. Calls for blood donations to the battle-neighboring hospital continued to circulate social media websites for hours. How the Muslim Brotherhood fighters evacuated their positions remains unknown, but one of them was caught by protesters trying to escape and was brutally stripped naked and stabbed before reaching the police station in critical condition. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: President Mohamed Mursi clung to office on Tuesday after rebuffing an army ultimatum to force a resolution to Egypt’s political crisis, and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood sought to mass its supporters to defend him.

But the Islamist leader looked increasingly isolated, with ministers resigning, the liberal opposition refusing to talk to him and the armed forces, backed by millions of protesters in the street, giving him until Wednesday to agree to share power.

In a defiant 2 a.m. statement, Mursi’s office said the president had not been consulted before the armed forces chief-of-staff set a 48-hour deadline for a power-sharing deal and would pursue his own plan for national reconciliation.

Newspapers across the political spectrum saw the military ultimatum as a turning point. “Last 48 hours of Muslim Brotherhood rule,” the opposition daily El Watan declared. “Egypt awaits the army,” said the state-owned El Akhbar.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: Sovereign bodies have given instructions to security authorities at Cairo International Airport to prevent Muslim Brotherhood and Wasat Party leaders, as well as former members of the People’s Assembly and the Freedom and Justice Party, from traveling until they are given the green light, private news agency ONA reports.

The ban was imposed due to reports filed against them.

Sovereign bodies is a term that usually refers to senior security authorities, such as members of the Egyptian intelligence service.

Meanwhile, security authorities at the airport have said that no orders were given to seize the presidential plane or to prevent President Mohamed Morsy from traveling abroad.

Christopher Dickey reports: Many on the ground in Cairo regard this drama as little more than a military coup with well-orchestrated protests giving the army the pretext to make a move. But neither the anti-government demonstrators calling for the army to intervene nor the officers in the high command itself actually want the military to rule. The army’s interests have always been to maintain its independence, its prestige, and its highly profitable industries while avoiding the dirty business of running a nearly ungovernable country with an economy on the verge of implosion.

Robert Springborg at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, an authority on the Egyptian military, says the situation is further complicated by the disarray of the opposition, which has now proved, once again, it can gather people in the street but lacks the organization able to run a government. Springborg believes the military would like the Brotherhood-dominated government to make a host of concessions, including liberalization of the Constitution and opening the way to new elections. “I think Morsi himself is expendable,” says Springborg. “Morsi is now dead weight for them.”

But adding to the complications are possible divisions within the military itself, where al-Sisi is tainted by his past close cooperation with the once-fearsome and now feckless Islamist party. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Egypt’s powerful military issued an ultimatum to the government of President Mohamed Morsi on Monday: resolve the crisis that has pitted hundreds of thousands of Morsi’s opponents against his supporters and ground this country to a political standstill — or the military will intervene.

Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, commander of Egypt’s armed forces, said the military may soon take action to enforce the demands of the masses of Egyptians who took to the streets on Sunday calling for the president’s ouster.

“The armed forces reiterates its call to meet the demands of the people, and it gives everyone 48 hours as a last chance to carry the burden of the ongoing historic circumstances that the country is going through,” Sissi said in a statement broadcast on national television.

“If the demands of the people are not met within the given period of time, [the military] will be compelled by its national and historic responsibilities, and in respect for the demands of Egypt’s great people, to announce a roadmap for the future, and procedures that it will supervise involving the participation of all the factions and groups.”

Anti-government activists have called repeatedly on the military in recent days to back them in their struggle against Morsi and his supporters in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Many interpreted Sissi’s remarks on Monday as a victory for their cause.

“I think it’s highly unlikely that Morsi will be able to make a deal with the opposition in 48 hours. I don’t think anyone wants to deal with Morsi anymore,” said Wael Nawara, a longtime political activist, and the co-founder of the liberal Dustour party.

“So that effectively means that the military will basically appoint some kind of transition government,” he said.

The military had repeatedly signaled that it does not want to return to the helm of politics, which it commanded — turbulently — in the first year and a half after the ouster of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak in February, 2011. But Sissi also said earlier this month that the army would step in if Egypt’s political crisis worsened.

AFP adds: In Tahrir Square, anti-Morsi protesters erupted in joy after the army’s statement.

“Come down Sisi, Morsi is not my president,” the protesters chanted, urging the country’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to intervene.

An official from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood said the powerful movement was “studying” the army’s statement.

Evan Hill writes: Families have stockpiled food and water, drivers have slept nights in petrol lines that snaked for city block after city block, and power cuts have rippled across the governorates and major cities. Half a dozen people have died in a spasm of violence that threatens to become a full-blown seizure when mass protests against President Mohamed Morsi break out today. Headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party have been attacked and burned throughout the Nile Delta, and his supporters’ rallies assaulted. Brotherhood toughs have banded together outside their offices wearing hard hats and makeshift shields and carrying homemade guns, ready to bludgeon or blow away what they fear is a coming wave of paid street thugs, the very embodiment of the counter-revolution.

Morsi’s opponents, sometimes backed by police, have also taken to the streets with firearms. Longtime revolutionaries uneasy with the violent omens and new, questionable allies have swallowed their hesitation and prepare to march on the presidential palace. As protesters sacked a Brotherhood office in Alexandria on Friday, someone in the crowd stabbed to death a young American teacher filming with his camera. In beleaguered Port Said, already subject to gun battles between citizens and police that killed dozens in March, a gas tank exploded at an anti-Morsi rally, reportedly killing one man and horribly maiming many more. Rumors flew that the protest had been bombed.

The country is gripped by expectant hysteria, like a Twilight Zone version of the hours before a World Cup final: nearly 90 million penned-in bystanders waiting on the opening whistle of a match to be played for keeps with guns and knives by partisans they hardly recognize as their own. One online commentator described the impending movement to oust Morsi on the one-year anniversary of his election as the birth of a new political order that may kill its mother. A journalist said it was as if Egypt’s body politic were rejecting a transplant and killing the nation in the process, a fledgling democracy’s auto-immune system gone haywire.

How did the country get here? How did the January 2011 uprising and its young, made-for-TV activists spin out into another zero-sum game for control? The story is complicated, and the strategic and tactical failures by both the secularist opposition and the Brotherhood so profoundly, majestically short-sighted and self-defeating that some have retreated into that most time-tested of rationales, the conspiracy, to explain how things could have gone so wrong, so fast. In their narrative, the crisis has been stage managed by the military, Egypt’s eminence grise and ultimate power-broker, beginning on the day in February 2011 when the generals opportunistically seized on the mass protests to quietly but forcefully escort Hosni Mubarak, his family and his cronies from the stage. [Continue reading…]