

When last most Americans heard from Mohamed ElBaradei – if they ever heard of the Egyptian diplomat at all – he was that guy from the United Nations atomic watchdog, complaining about Iran's failure to come clean about its nuclear program. Now he's positioning himself as the public face of the explosive Egyptian protest movement. Could this bureaucrat actually become the next ruler of Egypt?

Probably not, but that's not to say he can't play a role whatever comes next for one of the most important Arab nations – and one of the United States' most important Mideast allies. ElBaradei, who's lived in Vienna for ages while he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, returned to Egypt on Thursday to much fanfare – much of it self-created.

Foreigners like him because they know him: a sensible, competent, inoffensive diplomat, amidst the chaos of a possible post-Mubarak Egypt. ("Diplomat with international heft," swoons the Financial Times.) With massive protests scheduled for tomorrow, broadcast to the world in real time on Twitter, tomorrow may be the biggest day of ElBaradei's career.

His buildup to it, however, has been full of FAIL. Even before touching down in Cairo, ElBaradei said that if the people really wanted him, he'd be willing to serve as interim president. This from a guy with dubious support on the ground, amidst a swelling series of demonstrations without a clear leader or control by any major opposition party, without 30-year-ruler Hosni Mubarak ever even hinting at stepping aside.

It was "tone-deaf," says Michael Hanna, a Mideast expert at the Century Foundation. "At this point, he's probably burned too many bridges and played it wrong" with the opposition. To recover, Hanna suggests that ElBaradei go to Suez, where the protests have grown especially violent, to both "show his bona fides" with the demonstrators and to display that "it's not about him."

Better yet, ElBaradei could make the most of his actual expertise: diplomacy. Ahead of the giant protests tomorrow, in which the government is expected to shut down communications networks even as the eyes of the world gaze on Egypt, Mubarak is looking for some face-saving way out of the morass that can keep him in power without bloodshed. It might make sense for ElBaradei to start dealing.

"If he put together a committee of reconciliation and dialogue," says Daniel Brumberg, a Mideast democracy scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace, ElBaradei would have "credibility with the opposition, and he'd have leverage the talk" to Mubarak – which, implicitly, would position him as a figure on par with the longtime autocrat. Without a single figure to talk to in the opposition, Mubarak has few options but to crack down, leaving him further reviled in Egypt and isolated internationally.

For ElBaradei, it would display his strengths. He may be based in Vienna, but he's not an Egyptian Ahmed Chalabi, swooping in to a homeland he barely knows with more support from credulous foreigners than his countrymen. Egypt's "middle class professionals and intelligentsia" see him as one of their own, Brumberg continues, and the major opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, typically prefers to coalition with consensus figures than propose to take charge.

"But if the demand is for Mubarak to resign," says Brumberg, "that's something of an overreach."

Few expect the Mubarak regime to end tomorrow, and Egypt's vast security apparatus could keep tomorrow from even being the beginning of the end. But much depends on what the army does when huge crowds flood the streets of Egypt's major cities.

"Tomorrow is obviously huge – it's a huge, huge, huge thing that's going to happen," Hanna says. "What is the army going to do? It could step in, do a transition like in Tunisia, or tomorrow could be a bloodbath." If the army does step in, ElBaradei could look like a compromise choice for an interim president, as he offered himself up to be.

For now, ElBaradei is letting his Twitter feed do the talking, in the fashion of the nascent Egyptian uprising. "We shall continue to exercise our right of peaceful demonstration and restore our freedom & dignity," he tweeted. "Regime violence will backfire badly."

Photo: International Atomic Energy Agency

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