(CNN) -- If street protesters escalate their demands this week that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must surrender power now rather than in September, it may be up to the Egyptian military to nudge him out the door immediately, analysts say.
Already, Egypt's military, the guardian of secular stability in a major corner of the Arab world, has indicated it sympathizes with demonstrators when it announced it won't use force against protesters this week.
If given a choice between Mubarak and the masses who rejected his announcement he'll wait until the September elections to step down, military leaders now in control of a new cabinet won't back the president, some analysts say.
"They could crush the demonstrators, which is what Saddam Hussein did" in Iraq, said analyst William Quandt, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a National Security Council staff member in the 1970s who was involved in the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.
"Sheer repression could work, but there would be a strong reaction, and the United States would respond adversely.
"The alternative is that the military looks after its own corporate interests," Quandt continued. "Mubarak is making things difficult. As long as he refuses to go, the demonstrators won't stop. So if (they) have to choose between (their) interests and his, they would choose theirs. They would say, 'Mr. President, we can't stand up beside you and you have to go'.
"I think that's the way it's going to turn out, but it will take a few more days," Quandt said. CNN
