It gives you some sense of how confident President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood feel in their position that, according to this story just out from The Guardian, they are banking on the continued support of the Obama administration to pull them through.
‘Support’ of course requires a great deal of context in a case like this. The White House is clearly not big fans of the Morsi administration. And yet they also just as clearly don’t want to greenlight a military coup or encourage a descent into extra-legal violence.
Here’s the passage from The Guardian …
“Obviously we feel this is a military coup,” a presidential aide said. “But the conviction within the presidency is that [the coup] won’t be able to move forward without American approval.”
According to a statement on the president’s official Facebook page, Morsi met Sisi along with the prime minister late on Monday.
The aide’s comments earlier in the day implied that the presidency was hopeful of continued US support. They also suggested the presidency was banking on the likelihood that the military would not risk upsetting the US, which provides it with significant funding.
On Monday, the US president, Barack Obama, indicated that Morsi had not yet lost his backing. “We don’t make those decisions just by counting the number of heads in a protest march but we do make decisions based on whether or not a government is listening to the opposition, maintaining a free press, maintaining freedom of assembly, not using violence or intimidation, conducting fair and free elections,” he said.
Meanwhile there’s this ….
Dangerous thing is: MB members still seemingly being charged up for an existential standoff, while much of Egypt is already "celebrating."
— Bassem Sabry باس٠(@Bassem_Sabry) July 1, 2013
