
Demonstrators gather near Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Saturday in defiance of the Mubarak government’s curfew.
FOR the US and Israel, the alarming spectre raised by the uprising in Egypt is the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood seizing power and forming a hostile Islamist regime in a country that has for decades been a bastion of US and Western support. This, in turn, conjures images of Muslim dominoes toppling one by one, amid the rise of regimes modelled on the rabid theocracy in Iran.
This scenario has been successfully exploited by the Egyptian government for 30 years to maintain its emergency rule and justify the brutal crushing of opponents and has been cited by the US to rationalise its backing of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
FOR the US and Israel, the alarming spectre raised by the uprising in Egypt is the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood seizing power and forming a hostile Islamist regime in a country that has for decades been a bastion of US and Western support. This, in turn, conjures images of Muslim dominoes toppling one by one, amid the rise of regimes modelled on the rabid theocracy in Iran.
This scenario has been successfully exploited by the Egyptian government for 30 years to maintain its emergency rule and justify the brutal crushing of opponents and has been cited by the US to rationalise its backing of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.