President Barack Obama is wrongly siding with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and his controversial power grab with the Muslim Brotherhood that has triggered violent protests in the streets of Cairo, a top Middle Eastern and terrorism expert says.
“The Obama administration is giving Morsi the green light,’’ Dr. Walid Phares — an advisor to Congress and author of the book “The Coming Revolution’’ — tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
“It has given the Muslim Brotherhood the green light since Day One to seize power in Egypt and they have partnered politically with the Brotherhood.’’
Earlier this week, more than 200,000 chanting protestors jammed Tahrir Square to protest Morsi’s hardline issuance of constitutional amendments last Thursday that grant him near-absolute power — including authority over Egypt’s judicial system.
The angry dissenters — echoing the Arab Spring protests in 2010 and 2011 that ended the iron-fisted reign of President Hosni Mubarak — chanted in Arabic: “The people want to bring down the regime! Leave! Leave!’’
The growing unrest leaves the Obama Administration with a very difficult and challenging choice, Phares said.
“When Washington says that we support the Arab Spring — today the Arab Spring is in Tahir Square. It’s been built again at the hands of youth, minorities, women, middle class – this is what the Obama administration should be supporting, not President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood,’’ Phares said.
“Are they going to be siding with the Muslim Brotherhood authoritarian regime or they are going to siding with the real Arab Spring?
“It’s a very tough choice, which is going to tell us a lot more about American foreign policy over the next four years.’’
With Morsi showing no signs of backing down, Phares believes he is revealing a master plan to establish unchallengeable power.
“Since 2011, when young Egyptians, the youth, the laptop people, Facebook, the Google people, women, minorities, workers, and middle class … moved to bring down Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship, at that time the Muslim Brotherhood were in the back,’’ Phares explained.
“[Then] they came in … and little by little, they sidelined the youth, they outmaneuvered the army, they obtained support from the Obama administration and they seized power ... His actions now all indicate that he wants to establish an Islamist state and we can see that masses and millions of Egyptians are refusing this and opposing him.’’
Phares believes the United States policies towards Egypt are being shaped partially by big money.
The administration has been “influenced by the intellectuals and the academics and the advisors . . . these elites have been very sympathetic to the petro-dollars power in the region,’’ he said.
On the subject of the United Nations’ expected vote to recognize Palestine as a “non-member state,’’ Phares said the seeds were planted decades ago.
“The Palestinian Authority . . . since the signing of the peace process with Israel in 1992-1993 — the famous Camp David Accord — practically obtained unofficial recognition by dozens and dozens of countries, excluding Israel and the United States,’’ he said.
“The formalization of that vote this week is basically about granting that entity.’’
Phares said the success of ongoing peace talks will partially hinge on the stability of the Palestine government.
“[The issue is] recognizing the borders between Palestine and Israel. It’s to solve the issues of the refugees, it’s to solve the issue of Jerusalem,’’ he said.
“There is no jeopardy … unless a faction within the Palestinians, in this case like Hamas, will take over the government of Palestine, the recognized one, and then we are back to square one.’’
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