Obama Rift With Mubarak Alters U.S. Mideast Calculus

You don't say?

At New York Times:

WASHINGTON — After days of delicate public and private diplomacy, the United States openly broke with its most stalwart ally in the Arab world on Wednesday, as the Obama administration strongly condemned violence by allies of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt against protesters and called on him to speed up his exit from power.

Egypt’s government hit back swiftly. The Foreign Ministry released a defiant statement saying the calls from “foreign parties” had been “rejected and aimed to incite the internal situation in Egypt.” And Egyptian officials reached out to reporters to make clear how angry they were at their onetime friend.

Separately, in an interview, a senior Egyptian government official took aim at President Obama’s call on Tuesday night for a political transition to begin “now” — a call that infuriated Cairo.

But the White House was not backing down. “I want to be clear,” said Robert Gibbs, the press secretary. “ ‘Now’ started yesterday.”

The Obama administration seemed determined Wednesday to put as much daylight as possible between Mr. Obama and Mr. Mubarak, once considered an unshakable American supporter in a tumultuous region, with Mr. Gibbs once again raising the specter of a cutoff of American aid to the Mubarak government if the Egyptian president failed to bend.

“There are things that the government needs to do,” he said. “There are reforms that need to be undertaken. And there are opposition entities that have to be included in the conversations as we move toward free and fair elections.” Those elections are currently scheduled for September, but the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said, “The sooner that can happen, the better.”

The open rupture between the United States and Egypt illustrates how swift and dramatic changes in Cairo are altering the calculus of the entire region and the administration’s foreign policy agenda. Besides Egypt, there were upheavals this week among other close American allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, and in the long struggle to reach a Middle East peace. Israeli officials expressed concern that Mr. Mubarak’s abrupt exit could jeopardize the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Maybe the White House is reading my blog?