“These guys are thugs”

It’s not that Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Egypt’s unofficial opposition leader, doesn’t know all that. But he believes something else, too — that he finally has President Mohamed Morsy right where he wants him. In a wide-ranging interview with Foreign Policy at his home outside Cairo, ElBaradei described why the ruling Muslim Brotherhood was on its back foot, and slammed the United States for remaining silent in the face of the Islamist organization’s growing autocratic tendencies.

“[Brotherhood officials] are using the same language of Mubarak — stability. These guys are thugs. It’s the same thing,” he says. “At least by what you read, some of the [Brotherhood's] militias are killing some of these guys [in street clashes] — they are using the same tactics. Except they have beards.” …

“Particularly in the U.S., frankly, what you see is a very muted reaction,” he says. “People here are very disappointed… they want the Americans, and everybody else, to put their money with their mouth is. And that’s not happening.”