Egypt’s media is responding to President Barack Obama’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly with something between enthusiastic approval and outright euphoria. The overarching perception is that, the occasional caveat aside, the White House has accepted that American interests require ongoing work with the army-backed interim government:

Analysts believe the US has prioritised its ‘interests’ over ‘ideals’ in dealing with new interim government in Cairo… Gamal Abdel-Gawad Soltan, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, said that there had been a real change in the United States narrative. “There was recognition that the new authorities are stable and that the United States could work with them,” Soltan told Ahram Online…

Political analyst Said Sadek said Obama’s conciliatory statements towards the new government in Cairo were even stronger since he was addressing the United Nations. “He is speaking in an international forum, addressing head of states and international media. He is basically addressing the whole world,” Sadek said. Sadek also considered Obama’s statements to be a “fatal blow” for the Muslim Brotherhood, days after an Egyptian court banned the organisation.

Obama acknowledged that former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked government as having been “unwilling or unable to govern in a way that was fully inclusive.” He committed to developing a “constructive relationship” with Egypt’s interim army-backed government, though he conditioned some future aid – especially “certain military systems” – on democratic progress.

Egypt’s foreign minister simply described the speech as “positive,” and noted that bilateral discussions over aid would occur in bilateral forums rather than at the United Nations. The response is markedly warmer than concerns that Cairo aired openly before Obama’s speech, including a statement by Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in which he described Egypt’s relations with America as “shaken.”

The U.S.-Egyptian relationship is grounded in close military-to-military ties stretching back decades. The New York Times last August cataloged a variety of ways that the U.S. leverages those ties, including by gaining “near-automatic approval for military overflights” and being allowed “to cut to the front of the line through the Suez Canal in times of crisis.”

American military aid has in turn assisted the military in its efforts to stabilize the Sinai Peninsula and uproot the jihadist infrastructure in the area.

[Photo: russavia / Wiki Commons]