Mohammed Morsi may still be the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt when he wakes up in the morning, but no one knows whether he will still be president when he goes to sleep each night, The Independent hedged on Tuesday. Some 84 million Egyptians agree, and according to several media reports, even Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi has urged his president to resign. It may not be an outright military coup, but it is a coup de grace.
The Egyptian military is usually discreet and rarely comes out with overt ultimatums. That it has done so now indicates how grave the situation is, as it was in 2011. With the military effectively siding with Morsi's opponents on Monday and issuing him a 48-hour ultimatum, and then coming up with a road map for national reconciliation, there is no doubt that Morsi's moment of truth is drawing near.
The first thing Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood man, did when he was elected president in July 2012 was to revoke the constitutional decree that gave Egypt's Supreme Military Council most of its power. Now, in the absence of an agreement between the coalition and opposition, the military has suggested dissolving the parliament, which is currently dominated by Islamists, suspending the constitution and calling an early election.
The protests seen across Egypt over the weekend have demonstrated that the secular opposition in Egypt has learned the lessons of the past. It has already tasked one of its senior members, Mohamed ElBaradei, with preparing a plan for a transitional regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, has made every possible mistake. It failed to foster a dialogue with the opposition, failed to improve Egypt's economy, and promoted its Islamist ideology despite the objection voiced by the majority of Egyptians. It also nominated its least charismatic member for president.
To top it all off, the Muslim Brotherhood booted the Supreme Military Council out of the country's leadership, instead of cultivating the coalition formed between them in the post-Hosni Mubarak era. As unnatural as that coalition might have been, it could have proved useful, especially now.
In the current Egyptian climate the Muslim Brotherhood has no one to turn to, not ever the Salafi movement. Morsi is acting just as other Arab leaders did during the Arab Spring and just like Mubarak, and like Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali, he does not understand that the end has come.
The military wants to run Egypt, but it does not want to manage it. That is why it wants the temporary ruling council, which it intends to set in place after Morsi steps down, to comprise mostly civilians. Sissi has a firmer grip on reality than his predecessor, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, ever did. He remembers all too well the masses protesting against Tantawi in Tahrir Square, and the last thing he wants to hear are the same masses chanting, "Out with Sissi."
One also cannot ignore the American element in the Egyptian equation. U.S. President Barack Obama -- the same Obama who welcomed Morsi's election -- is now urging him to agree to an early elections, when only a week ago, U.S. Ambassador to Cairo Anne Patterson urged the opposition to respect the elections' results.
The Egyptian narrative does not have the U.S. coming out smelling like a rose. It is hard to believe that America, which according to whistleblower Edward Snowden sees all, hears all and knows all, is oblivious to the atmosphere in the Egyptian street.
Egypt has being rallying against Morsi since April. Some 22 million people have already signed a petition urging him to resign. Only Washington was unaware of the situation and is apparently having trouble figuring Egypt out. One wonders if Snowden has considered seeking asylum in Cairo.
The Obama administration, it seems, is living on another planet. Even The New York Times, which rarely criticizes the president, wondered Tuesday if Secretary of State John Kerry's shuttle diplomacy mission between Israel and the Palestinian Authority can really take place while pretending that Syria and Egypt do not exist.
The Middle East has changed and so have the region's priorities, but the U.S. administration is choosing to focus on "tranquil Tel Aviv," as the Times put it.
Morsi is showing no signs that he will yield to the revolt that is slowly deposing him. Egypt may not become a democracy overnight, but the Egyptian people have spoken once again. They have no use for an inefficient Islamist dictator.
As we have asserted before, the Arab Spring was not the product of the Arab uprising of 2011 and the "Islamist winter" is also starting to fade away. That is perhaps the only positive thing taking place in our crazy neighborhood. No wonder Kerry prefers hanging out in Tel Aviv.
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