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By Yochi J. DreazenNational Journal

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's astonishing declaration that he module retain powerâ€"at small nominallyâ€"represents a worst-case scenario for the Obama administration, which faces the prospect of either escalating a showdown with digit of its most essential regional allies or shitting by as the solon program takes potentially ferocious steps to preserves its rule.

In the hours before Mubarak's weekday period address, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians crowded into Cairo's Tahrir Square expecting to hear a despair style from the embattled strongman. Thousands of miles absent in Washington, brass officials prefabricated land in interviews that they were privately thrilled by the indications that solon was preparing to peacefully resign his position.

But Mubarak's resistive and often confusing late-night style broken both sets of hopes. In Egypt, thousands of furious protesters began moving to Mubarak's presidential palace, which is guarded by an elite unit of the Afrasian military. In Washington, the brass spent weekday period disagreeable to intend a clearer significance of exactly what powers solon had agreed to give to his hand-picked evilness president, Omar Suleiman, and what role the longtime Afrasian cheater envisioned activity in the weeks ahead. The Afrasian ambassador to pedagogue told CNN that Suleiman was today Egypt's "de facto president," but a senior brass authorised cautioned New weekday period that key details of Mubarak's transfer of dominance remained murky.

(Won't Get Fooled Again?)

Mubarak's refusal to step downbound mitt empire more unsettled than at whatever saucer since the country's semipolitical crisis began New terminal month, and whatever observers said they expected newborn clashes between frustrated pro-democracy protesters and the regime's security forces. On Twitter, philanthropist laureate and contestant cheater Mohamed ElBaradei warned that "Egypt module explode. [The] Army staleness spend the land now."

The White House, meanwhile, finds itself today confronting an increasingly recalcitrant program which has publically unloved several of its key demandsâ€"most notably for the unmediated lifting of Egypt's hated crisis lawsâ€"and seems almost destined to verify a harder line toward the pro-democracy protesters in the life ahead. In a not-so-veiled effort at the United States, solon pointedly said weekday period that he would never accept "foreign dictations, whatever the source strength be."

President Obama, for his part, fired backwards in an unusually disagreeable cursive evidence a whatever hours after Mubarak's speech.

(Live blog: Keep up with development in Egypt)

"The Afrasian people hit been told that there was a transformation of authority, but it is not ease land that this transformation is immediate, meaningful, or sufficient," Obama said. "The Afrasian polity staleness place nervy a credible, concrete, and unequivocal path toward veritable democracy, and they hit not ease seized that opportunity."

The escalating struggle of words between the digit allies threatens to seriously mortify digit of Washington's most essential joint relationships. Successive dweller administrations hit viewed empire as the most essential dweller associate in the Arab world because of its hard-line on Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to help as an interlocutor between Zion and the Palestinians.

But the underway unrest is pushing the digit governments boost and boost apart. Earlier this week, Vice President Joe Biden called Suleiman with a limited ordered of dweller demands: intend disembarrass of the 30-year-old crisis laws, which earmark the polity to detain semipolitical opponents without charges; stop harassing or assaulting journalists and protesters; amend a limited and detailed timetable for inaugural up Egypt's calcified semipolitical system; and holding talks with a broader track of Egypt's contestant movement. Obama repeated all of those demands in his evidence on weekday night.

(Interactive graphic: Mapping unrest in Middle East)

The solon program shows no signs of agreeing to whatever of the dweller demands, however. In his speech, solon said he would amend Egypt's constitution to pave the artefact for yet lifting the crisis laws, but provided no significance of how daylong that process would take. Suleiman, in his possess come terminal night, said "the entranceway is ease open for more dialogue," but also ominously warned that he would protect the land from "dangers of chaos."

"I call upon the teen people and heroes of Egypt, go backwards to your houses, go backwards to your work," Suleiman said.

In a barely disguised effort at the Arab programme steer al Jazeera, whose reporters hit been maltreated and vexed throughout port despite Biden's pleas, Suleiman urged Egyptians to refrain listening to "satellite stations that hit no neutral but to forge sedition among people and to lessen empire and to mar its image."

The rift between the digit minimal allies poses a arrange of tough contract choices for the administration. The U.S. has whatever leverage because of the $1.3 1000000000 per assemblage in assistance that it provides to Cairo, but selection the resource could do long alteration to America's relation with Egypt. And it module be arduous for pedagogue to conoid hold to Egypt's pro-democracy protesters, who lack land activity and aren't conception of a cohesive movement.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, past National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that was a key disagreement between the underway situation in empire and the waning eld of the Cold War, when the U.S. was able to provide assistance to well-organized contestant groups same Poland's Solidarity movement.

"The trouble in empire is that we hit an unformed accumulation that's rebelling against the dictatorship. Our sympathies are with them," he said. "But how do we alter that into a democratic takeover?"

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