The United States had been reassured by the Muslim Brotherhood assuming power in Egypt and their plans. It had seemed to it at first that these plans were steadily moving forward to form the basis of the new Middle East it seeks to build. And there is nothing better than Islamists assuming power in a major country like Egypt to fulfill such plans. The Americans built their strategy on grounds they had assumed to be solid. Indeed, the region is a Muslim one, and religious and sectarian tendencies there have been on the rise for decades. Moreover, Turkey's Islamists have proven to be allies who can be relied on at critical moments. Their quarrel with Israel had been a passing one – and one which they made use of to get closer to Arab peoples, while maintaining military and intelligence collaboration with the Hebrew state. As for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, it had passed multiple tests before coming to power in Cairo, through numerous meetings its members had held with officials in the White House. After coming to power, President Mohamed Morsi asserted that he used to work as an expert at the NASA space agency and was proud of this. And it is well known that the United States cannot entrust anyone with the secrets of its agencies unless it has ascertained their complete loyalty. Thus, whether his story proves true or was merely meant for boasting, its purpose remains to prove that he shares a single goal with the Americans. During its year in power, the Muslim Brotherhood had labored to reinforce Washington's trust in it. It preserved the Camp David Accords with Israel. It drew Hamas into the axis opposed to Iran and Syria. It became, alongside the Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, a main basis for American-Islamist cooperation (in the political sense of the term) in the Middle East. Yet the Americans, after the blood-spattered events in Egypt, realized that their wager had been misplaced. Indeed, the people came out by the millions to protest against the policies of the Muslim Brotherhood, their monopoly of power, and their attempts to impose their own political concept of Islam and to subject every Egyptian to a daily test to prove loyalty to them. In other words, they tried to monopolize power through their own understanding of Islam and impose such an understanding on everyone, whether they were Muslim or non-Muslim. America's relapse in Egypt was expressed by President Barack Obama, who interrupted his vacation to give the Egyptian army a first warning. He thus cancelled the joint "Bright Star" maneuvers, maintaining the financial aid while waiting for what developments in Cairo will result in. Thus, if the Egyptian army maintains the policy it has been known to have, from the Sadat era to that of Mubarak, Washington will maintain such aid, and perhaps even increase it. Otherwise, it will cut off its aid and take additional, more "offensive", steps. In fact, Congress and the press have begun to pave the way for this by pressuring the White House. Yet despite all the steps taken by America in supporting or opposing the army, domestic developments remain the core of the issue. Most important is for the Muslim Brotherhood not to engage in violence and covert activity, because this would solicit wider interference from the United States and others, and would turn Egypt into another Syria. Between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington will choose those who most closely adhere to its policies, not those who are most democratic.
