WASHINGTON — By all accounts, the generals removed the democratically elected president, put him in detention, arrested his allies and suspended the Constitution. Army vehicles and soldiers in riot gear roamed the streets, while jet fighters roared overhead.

But was it a military coup d'état? For the White House and the new Egyptian government, that is the $1.5 billion question.

President Obama’s government on Thursday was reviewing the implications for American aid to Egypt after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, and under United States law it has no choice but to cut off financial assistance to the country if it determines that he was deposed in a military coup. Egyptian officials quickly argued that what happened was not a coup but a popular uprising.

For the moment, Mr. Obama seemed content to let the debate play out in hopes of using the possibility of an aid cutoff to influence the situation without actually pulling the trigger yet. In his only public statement since Mr. Morsi’s ouster, Mr. Obama carefully avoided using the “c-word,” as some in Washington termed it, although his description of events certainly sounded couplike. But aides made clear that he would escalate his response depending on where the Egyptian military went from here.