Interview| Khaled Ali taking stock of June 30: ‘The regime’s obsession isn’t the Brotherhood, It’s Mubarak’
“June 30 is a clear message, just like January 25 before it: if the regime doesn’t listen to the people’s voice, change will happen. Regardless of what this change leads to, and whether it’s in the people’s interest or not, it will inevitably happen.”
This is the conclusion offered by leftist lawyer and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali in his interview with Al Manassa. Thirteen years after the June 30 protests, he reminds us of a third current of which he was a prominent symbol—one that refused to take shelter behind either of the crisis’ two poles during that moment of deep polarization. On one side stood the National Salvation Front alliance with the military establishment and security agencies; on the other, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.
Today, as the divide remains unhealed, Khaled Ali returns to read the current landscape in the light of that split. It was a moment when President Mohamed Morsi squandered every opportunity to avert the explosion, and the National Salvation Front chose to entrench the political authority of the military. In doing so, both sides threw away the chance to realize the demands of the January revolution, bringing Egypt to a moment where it now sits “on the edge of an explosion of social rage… When will it erupt? God only knows. In what shape or form, and for what reasons? God only knows that, too.”
Neither military nor Brotherhood
Stepping back from the two poles of the crisis on June 30 was not Khaled Ali's choice alone; this current was already active on the Egyptian street, charting a third path distinct from the other two.
“Because it didn’t feel like the Brotherhood was taking the country where we’d hoped, especially after the constitutional declaration,” Ali says. “It was so obvious that a really significant number of advisors working with Mohamed Morsi in the presidency—from across the political spectrum—just quit. They saw this wasn’t the right path to get the revolution’s demands. On the flip side, you had the Salvation Front’s path, and there was a clear alliance between them and the military.”
Since the 1980s, Khaled Ali has been active as a leftist labor lawyer, tackling landmark cases on the minimum wage, anti-privatization, and union independence. Following the January revolution, he ran for the presidency as its youngest candidate, drawing widespread support from youth-led movements. He later helped establish the leftist Bread and Freedom Party.
With Morsi taking office in June 2012, this third current quickly finalized its rejection of the new administration. The breaking point was the November 2012 constitutional declaration granting Morsi sweeping powers, which revived deep fears of the “Brotherhoodization” of the state across broad segments of the Egyptian public, particularly among Christians.
“Calling early presidential elections would’ve been enough to change the whole landscape, even before we ever reached the June 30 moment”
These anxieties led some to seek an alliance with the Salvation Front, which formed as a direct reaction to Morsi's decree. While its alliance with the military establishment was obscured at the time, Ali views it today as undeniable.
“Now, when you listen to interviews with some party leaders, you find out there were phone calls and meetings—away from their official gatherings—dealing with the Salvation Front and the decisions it was supposed to come out with,” Ali notes.
He sees the same dynamics at play regarding the Tamarod (Rebel) movement, which was founded on April 20, 2013, and transformed from “an important youth initiative into a tool slotted into a framework moving in that very same direction.”
This is how the political current formed between the two paths: “The Brotherhood, the Salvation Front, and between them, the ordinary people on the street who saw that neither path was right and wanted real change.” He emphasizes that what set this Third Current apart was its deeper analysis of the situation, its serious rejection of military intervention in the transition, and its refusal to align with the remnants of the Mubarak regime.
Stages of the fall
Khaled Ali expands on the period leading up to June 30, recalling the events of that turbulent year and the successive positions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood that led to a loss of trust. He points to what he calls “shocking moments” during Morsi’s rule.
Ali believes the most prominent of these turning points occurred at Cairo Stadium, when Morsi announced cutting ties with Syria.
“Bashar Al-Assad was dropping bombs and barrel bombs on the Syrian people, and there was a Syrian revolution happening. But at the end of the day, you don’t declare you’re cutting ties with a state in Cairo Stadium, in the middle of a rally where you’ve mobilized your supporters. That’s a major tell of how they ran the state, because a decision like that involves so many calculations…state-to-state relations on one hand, and people-to-people relations on the other.”
Ali also highlights the constitutional declaration, “which was issued with a clause stating it couldn’t be challenged in any way, shape, or form. To the point where even a section of the independent judiciary—not the Brotherhood, and not those tied to Mubarak—attacked that constitutional declaration.”
He points further to the live broadcast of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) meeting, and a familiar economic track: “The economic rhetoric of the Brotherhood leaders during Mubarak’s days wasn’t any different from the economic rhetoric of Ahmed Ezz.”
For Ali, the handling of these files proved the Brotherhood was simply unprepared. This extended to the lopsided formation of the Constituent Assembly: “I’m one of those people who filed a lawsuit against the assembly formed by Dr. Mohamed Morsi to draft the constitution, and I got a ruling from the Administrative Court to reconstruct it so there’d be a better balance.”
Faced with these crises, the leftist politician stresses that the third current stuck strictly to political tools.
“With these political tools we were expressing our rejection. We weren’t against the brothers developing their vision of how to run the state,” Ali says, pointing out that “the Brotherhood wasted the period from January to May, which was a huge window for them to analyze the situation, notice the anger simmering within the revolutionary political blocs, and start building a consensus around the outstanding issues that had piled up.”
The regime paid no heed, squandering every opportunity. For Ali, the scene on June 30 was merely the inevitable math of what preceded it: “It isn’t just about June 30 on its own. June 30 was the climax, the final boiling over, but what came before it was what actually mattered.”
Brotherhood arrogance
On the eve of June 2013, options grew narrow for the Brotherhood amidst the escalating movement. Despite this, Khaled Ali believes escaping the impasse was not impossible.
“My view is that calling early presidential elections would’ve been enough to change the whole landscape, even before we ever reached the June 30 moment,” Ali states. “The Egyptian street back then was going out to protest almost every single day, and the Brotherhood was losing a piece of its allies day by day. That was a warning sign you just couldn’t ignore.”
In cases of deep public backlash, Ali argues that a ruling faction faces a stark choice.
“In cases like this, you’re looking at one of two paths: either you read reality, understand the opposition forming against you both organizationally and publicly, and try to resolve it, or you ignore it and cling to the legitimacy of the ballot box.”
“No matter how much anyone swears there was no coordination between the Salvation Front and the military establishment, I won’t buy it”
Khaled Ali believes “the Brotherhood chose the second path, completely ignoring the massive warning signs on the street. The opposition to Morsi on the street was genuinely huge; it had a popular base and wasn't manufactured.” He views the refusal to restructure the cabinet as another act of hubris: “The Brotherhood kept Dr. Hesham Qandil as prime minister, and that in itself was an expression of defiance and arrogance.”
Ali dismisses the narrative that civil forces completely refused to cooperate with the presidency, arguing that a modicum of flexibility could have yielded results.
“If someone had come to us and said: ‘Look, the indicators are tough and they’re threatening the demands of the revolution. We realize we’ve made some mistakes, and we need to pull the revolutionary forces back together. We’re asking you to join the government, and we’re ready not to run it alone, and not even to hold the majority’—as a gesture of good faith toward the idea of partnership that everyone was talking about—I think that kind of approach would’ve been encouraging. It would’ve built a support system right in the middle of the crisis.”
The conflict, however, extended far beyond the presidential palace and Tahrir Square into a bitter, hyper-local struggle for institutional control.
“We were always looking at the conflict from above; we didn’t look at it from below,” Ali explains. “The struggle in the villages was brutal. Brotherhood groups seized control of youth centers and community development associations, and their fight in the villages and hamlets was bitter—with National Democratic Party groups, that once supported Mubarak, on one side, and the revolutionary youth aligned with the civil current on the other. There was a clear push to plant as many Brotherhood members as possible inside the body of the state and inside every organizational structure in society.”
While an election victory normally grants a party executive authority, Ali argues a post-revolutionary transition demands a different logic.
“You didn’t get there on your own. You’re the expression of a collective state of diverse groups that share a minimum threshold of demands. Representing these groups means you absolutely must have a partnership in governance. You’re in a transitional phase where you have to make every faction of the revolution feel like they’re part of this stage and sharing the responsibility.”
False dawn
Given this trajectory, the outcome of June 30 was entirely predictable. The structural levers of power guaranteed that the state would fall as easy prey to the military.
“Anyone close to political work—and you don’t even need a ton of political experience—knows that in moments of crisis, whoever holds the elements of power is the one who’s going to control the transition,” Ali says. “And the one who had the elements of power in that crisis was, in reality, the military establishment. So, they controlled the transition. And that control didn’t start on June 30; it was there well before.”
When asked about the Salvation Front's coordination with the army, Ali speaks with absolute certainty.
“If someone wants to swear by all that’s holy that there was no coordination with the military establishment, I won’t buy it. There was coordination happening through some leaders of the Salvation Front, and I wish people would just speak clearly about what went down. There was resistance too—I mean, there was a faction inside the Salvation Front that was pushing back and trying. Trying to say no.”
As examples of this internal resistance, Ali points to figures like Ahmed Fawzy of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and Abdel Ghaffar Shokr of the Socialist Popular Alliance. Yet these dissenting voices were quickly sidelined, drowned out by the polarization of the moment.
“Unfortunately, the sheer intensity of the conflict turned any voice in the middle into a traitor,” Ali recalls. “Every centrist voice was treated by each side as if it belonged to the other. If you argued with the Brotherhood and told them ‘what you’re doing is dangerous and you need to act differently,’ they marked you down as being with the military. And if you talked to the military about the importance of the democratic process and genuine democratic exits, they marked you down as a Brotherhood supporter.”
“The Brotherhood dragged the conflict onto the ground of violence. And once violence starts, the sound of bullets drowns everything out”
Yet, Ali rejects the idea that this outcome was inevitable, placing the blame squarely on the Salvation Front’s strategic myopia: “their main focus was simply bringing down the Brotherhood, with no regard for the alternative path, how to maintain a continuous democratic state, real early elections, and keeping state institutions out of those elections.”
Millions may not be enough
Ali frankly acknowledges that his current’s own mobilization was organizationally weak and slow to materialize.
“There were a lot of groups in the middle, and they formed what became known as the ‘Revolutionaries’ Front,’” Ali says. “Lots of groups rejected both paths and said the third way is for us to move differently. But in the end, these groups were organizationally weak. And talk of a third path only really started after Morsi was removed, but the reality is that whoever holds the power is the one who draws the line.”
Relying solely on street numbers to secure democracy proved to be a critical tactical gamble.
“There was this assumption that if people poured into the streets in massive numbers, the Brotherhood would read the room and handle it with some political intelligence and skill. Meaning they’d respect this turnout and not write it off as an illusion. So, millions in the street would carry the same weight as the ballot box, and the question then wouldn’t be how to cling to power, but how to remain part of the fabric of this nation.”
While the popular mobilization was genuine, Ali notes that state security agencies actively leveraged the moment.
“Who burned the churches? Who burned Christian property? Who dragged the conflict onto the ground of violence? When the conflict is dragged onto the ground of violence, the sound of bullets drowns everything out, and the voice of politics disappears.”
This path inevitably paved the way for July 3 and all that followed: the return of military rule, even if dressed in civilian clothes, represented by the head of the Constitutional Court taking the presidency, the selection of the Beblawi government, and the presence of Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei in the picture.
“The obsession the regime has right now isn’t the civil current, and it isn’t the Brotherhood—it’s Mubarak”
Looking back, Ali equates the long-term destructive cost of the Brotherhood’s tenure with the authoritarian aftermath of June 30.
“I’m not comparing bad to worse,” Ali says. “Both are incredibly costly, and in my view, both robbed the Egyptian people of so many opportunities. The struggle of the Egyptian people is an ongoing struggle, and the sheer number of people in prison is proof of that.”
But doesn’t Khaled Ali and the current to which he belongs bear some responsibility for where we ended up? The presidential candidate, who finished seventh in the 2012 elections with only about 130,000 votes, denies any guilt or responsibility. He also clears the revolutionary movements and youth mobilization, laying the blame entirely on the regime and the actors close to it.
“The choices of those outside of power were weak,” Ali asserts. “The primary choice lay in the hands of whoever held power.”
He defends himself further:
"Was it my job to send messages to the Brotherhood? Done. Was it my job to file lawsuits? We filed lawsuits, hearings were held, dialogue happened. Was it my job to protest? Done. Was it my job to express my views and my rejection of this path? Done. The other side—their job was either to listen to me or lock me up. And that, too, is exactly what happened."
The coming explosion
In analyzing the contemporary landscape, Ali offers a striking thesis: the ghost of the Mubarak regime poses the most significant ideological challenge to the current order.
“The obsession the regime has right now isn’t the civil current, and it isn’t the Brotherhood—it’s Mubarak,” Ali states. “The big challenge for the current regime is answering a question running through the mind of everyone on the Egyptian street: ‘How was Mubarak running things?’ Prices weren’t like this, education wasn’t like this, and class divisions weren’t like this. So the main question became: ‘Why can’t we even get back to that same starting point?’ There’s a comparison running in people’s minds, even if it’s silent, even if the media hides it and the politicians cover it up—a comparison between Mubarak’s time and right now.”
We asked him if people blame the January revolution when making this comparison rather than the current regime. He said:
“January 25 ended on March 19. The forces that came out on January 25 were fractured by the constitutional declaration issued on March 19. Then came the period of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule, and then the transitional phase of June 30, which we’re still living in today. From June 30 until this very moment, we’ve been on a political track tied to the military establishment and to the July 3 decleration, with all its positives and negatives.”
Thirteen years later, Khaled Ali sees that the post-June 30 regime, which derived its existence from the necessity of eliminating the Muslim Brotherhood, has failed even on its own terms.
“They’re still here, even if they aren’t speaking out,” Ali says. “Anyone who thinks prisons are going to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood, I tell them: your theory is wrong,” refusing to let today’s political discussion build on “who was right and who was wrong thirteen years ago. That’s an illusion.”
What matters most, according to the leftist politician, is “how we answer future questions tied to democracy, education, and health.” He warns: “Egypt is living on the edge of an explosion of social rage. Is there any force on the Egyptian street today capable of telling the people ‘go out’ and they’ll mobilize? No, no such force exists. And if they do go out, is there any force capable of absorbing them?”
Here, he envisions that the coming movement will produce “its natural leaders” from within itself—leaders we do not know, at a moment we cannot predict. “And that is not necessarily a bad thing.”