I wouldn’t want to start from here

Senators McCain and Graham are packing their bags for Cairo, reportedly having been asked to go by President Obama. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has visited already, including a meeting at an undisclosed location with former President Morsi.  The question is this:  what should all these luminaries be telling the military-backed government and its Muslim Brotherhood opponents?

Abdul Rahman al Rashed, editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat, suggests:

Everything can be negotiated, except Mursi’s return to the presidency—a demand that the Brotherhood knows will be impossible to fulfil. Thus, the solution can be as follows: a consensual cabinet, a short-term interim government and internationally supervised elections in which the Brotherhood participates. Then, everyone can return home claiming that they have got what they wanted.

My guess is that the senators will be taking a line close to this, insisting on a timetable for elections and as broad a government as possible to prepare for it.  In his less than articulate way, Lindsay Graham has suggested as much:

So we can go over and reinforce in a bipartisan fashion the message that we have to move to civilian control, that the military is going to have to, you know, allow the country to have new elections and move toward an inclusive, democratic approach.

Ashton’s message was pretty much the same.  She wanted a

fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

The trouble is that the Brotherhood is unlikely to agree unless it gets a lot in return.  Certainly it would want release of the former president and an end to court proceedings against its “supreme guide” as well as many other Brotherhood members.  It would want to be able to continue its demonstrations.  It would  want a return to the constitution written under its aegis and approved in a referendum.  It would want an end to what looks like a concerted military, police and judicial effort to treat the Brotherhood at least as badly as it treated its secularist opponents.

The Egyptian army seems unwilling to move in a conciliatory direction.  Its latest move is an investigation of foreign financing of the Brotherhood.  That would be a humorous reflection of what it did to the secularists when they were in bad odor with the military, if it weren’t so sad.  The military has already closed the Brotherhood’s broadcast outlets.  Not to mention the violence against Brotherhood demonstrators.

Given its intransigent history, the Brotherhood is far more likely to react by opting for hard resistance to not only the military-backed government in place at present but also to a new constitution, elections and any government that results from them.  It continues to insist on “constitutional legitimacy,”which is code for the return of Morsi.  Among other problems it faces, the Brotherhood could not afford to participate in an election it might lose, which is a pretty good bet given its dismal performance in power.

So the odds of a senatorial mission getting the Egyptian military to agree to anything even approaching what the Brotherhood would want as the price for its participation are low.  Far more likely is that the military and its government will agree to a timetable for a new constitution and subsequent elections.  They can blame lack of Brotherhood participation on its intransigence, which won’t even be far from the truth. The senators can then come home to declare victory and try to face down the rebellion within Republican ranks against continuing aid to Egypt.

Anyone who still harbors hopes for a democratic Egypt would not want to start from where we are.