The Jerusalem Post predicts the Egyptian army will a stage a successful military coup and seize power from the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsi — and likens the 48-hour ultimatum in progress to the final seconds of a sporting event.

"The situation parallels a sporting match, where one team has taken the last second lead and holds the ball, wasting the remaining time so that they will win," writes The Post's Ariel Bern Solomon. "Now that the army has set a concrete deadline for intervention, there is little chance reconciliation will be found."

The Egyptian Army gave Morsi 48 hours Monday — a time limit that ends on Wednesday — to reach a solution to the nation's growing anger at the government's dysfunctional leadership.

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Making the deadline somewhat surreal is the fact that a clock, ticking off the seconds, is appearing on Egyptian TV.

Morsi apparently hopes for the support of the Obama administration, which would likely help him retain power by helping restraining the military.

“Obviously we feel this is a military coup,” an aide to Morsi told London's Guardian newspaper. “But the conviction within the presidency is that [the coup] won’t be able to move forward without American approval.”

The Post reports that if Abel-Fattah el-Sisi — commander in chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces — takes power, it would not be Egypt's first coup. Gamal Abdel Nasser, a nationalist leader of the Free Officers Movement, overthrew King Farouk in 1952.

Barry Rubin — director of the GLORIA Center, an international research group, and a columnist for The Post — told the newspaper a coup would likely be violent because the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist supporters “are not going to go quietly."

He predicts Obama may back a coup and call for a return to democracy and early elections.