Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party – Egypt’s largest political movement, which holds almost half the seats in the country’s new parliament – have told the Guardian that the international community has been covertly lobbying them to strike a deal with Scaf that would provide a “safe exit” for the ruling generals in exchange for a smooth transition to democracy.

“Foreign embassies have been advocating this as a solution,” claimed Gehad el-Haddad, one of the brotherhood’s senior advisers. “They’re not just asking us to consider it – they’re saying it might be the only way.”

Despite early promises of a swift transition to civilian government, Scaf and its leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, have dragged their feet on democratic reform and instead launched several bloody crackdowns against pro-change demonstrators, leaving more than a hundred dead and thousands injured.