Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss

Last Wednesday there was a great story from David Kirkpatrick -- "Cairo Activist Fighting Tear Gas With Tear Gas." It's a description of the ongoing real war of the Egyptian Revolution as seen through the eyes of a street fighting man.The Mubarak police state remains alive and well in the Interior Ministry; the street fighters -- the real force of the uprising in Tahrir Square two years ago -- feel, and rightly so, that the Revolution is unfinished as long as the police of the Interior Ministry are unbowed:

Now, while elite politicians tussle over matters of ideology or provisions of the Constitution, street protesters like Mr. Mokbel say they are carrying on the fight that kindled the original revolt, a battle against Mr. Mubarak’s abusive and unaccountable security services. Two years later, they note, the security forces are still largely intact, and reports of torture, extortion and excessive force continue.

The street war between protesters and the police presents a double-edged challenge to President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who had been jailed without trial under Mr. Mubarak. Brotherhood leaders close to Mr. Morsi say he does not yet fully control the Interior Ministry. Its officers make no secret of their hostility to the Islamists, and Brotherhood leaders say that the new president is struggling to win the ministry’s trust in order to tame it.

But many in the street have turned against Mr. Morsi in part because they believe that he has sided with the security forces. Activists like Mr. Mokbel say they fear that like the region’s secular dictators, Mr. Morsi may use the security police against his opponents as a tool of political power.

“They are trying to build a new regime exactly like the old one, with all its disadvantages,” said Mr. Mokbel, an artist with a small and slender frame who, between battles, studies painting in a graduate program in one of Egypt’s top art schools.

The protesters, Mr. Mokbel argued, are the ones defending the rule of law, standing up for their right to peaceful expression. With no personal gain, he said, they risk their lives for their cause, for one another, and for their many friends who have fallen. “We owe them something,” he said. “Not just a better economic situation, a government that deals with the people, that is not authoritarian or repressive.”

Rather than extirpate the cancer the Morsi government has been gentle with the Interior Ministry hoping to co-opt it:

But now the Islamists’ apparent monopoly on power has turned activists cynical about Egypt’s young democratic process. Since Mr. Morsi’s decree temporarily suspending the power of the courts to challenge his decisions, violence around the country has escalated sharply. “When the regime smashes the judiciary against the wall, and uses the police as a tool of repression, who will conduct elections?” Mr. Mokbel asked. “If we wait for elections, what guarantees do we have?”

Senior Brotherhood officials close to Mr. Morsi say moving too fast to reform the Interior Ministry might provoke an open revolt by the police at a time when public security is already fraying. Instead, after recent clashes with police officers killed dozens of civilians, Mr. Morsi publicly thanked the security forces for their work, and in certain cities expanded police powers.

More proof of the fundamentally conservative nature of the Morsi Muslim Brotherhood government is provided by Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh in a story published the same Wednesday as Kirkpatrick's; it has to do with Iranian president Ahmadinejad's visit to Egypt. Mubarak and before him Sadat were opponents of Iran under the clerics. I didn't know that a street in Tehran was named after Sadat's assassin:

The relationship had atrophied over decades, damaged in particular by the Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat’s granting of asylum to the deposed Iranian shah, Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, who was given a state funeral in Cairo in 1980. When Mr. Sadat was assassinated the next year, Iran named a street after his killer, Khaled Islambouli.

Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first elected leader, promised a new direction for foreign policy that he said would be more independent than his predecessors’ and would reassert Egypt’s historical leadership role. Extending a hand to Iran was seen as part of an effort to improve ties with regional powers and, more important, to broker a solution to the war in Syria. 

Iranian officials were even more eager to mend the relationship, speaking of Egypt and Iran as the core of an axis of regional military powers. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been promoting the idea that the recent Arab uprisings were inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

The first major step toward repairing the relationship came in August, when Mr. Morsi visited Tehran during the meeting of the Nonaligned Movement, in what was seen as an effort toward easing Iran’s international isolation.

 But in Tehran Morsi toed the Saudi line, criticizing the Assad government:

But that trip also veered off script. Mr. Morsi embarrassed his hosts somewhat by delivering a stinging condemnation of President Assad, delighting Saudi Arabia and Qatar, strong financial supporters of both Egypt and the Syrian insurgency.

And in speaking about the Arab uprisings, Mr. Morsi notably avoided, as he often does, any mention of the Shiite-led revolt against Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, further endearing him to allies in the gulf region who have portrayed the uprising as an Iranian plot rather than a popular movement. 

Many analysts think it unlikely that the Egypt-Iran thaw will develop into fully restored relations, given the pressure exerted by the United States and the gulf monarchies on Mr. Morsi to keep his distance. Despite his talk of charting a new path for Egypt, “the Morsi administration is trying to avoid any direct confrontation with the international system,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University of Cairo. 

A separate attempt by the Egyptian leader to develop closer ties with Iran, by including it in a regional effort with Turkey and Saudi Arabia to solve the Syrian crisis, also faltered, after the Saudis stopped participating, diplomats said. 

“Morsi is learning the constraints and the realities of the cold wars in the region — the old rivalries and local calculations,” Mr. Shahin said.

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss," as the Who remind us in "Won't Get Fooled Again." Robert Dreyfuss' book Devil's Game lays out the long, rich relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the United States. The Egyptian street is coming to the conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood is going to provide a version of the state very similar to Mubarak's, with the notable exception that the Brotherhood can legitimately win -- at least so far -- popular elections.