Opinions – Guest Contributor

President Hosni Mubarak's speech is the equivalent of Gary Cooper, Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood sneering, "You want power? Come and get it!" He may be a dictator but he is one tough dude.

Or maybe he is a dictator because he is one tough dude. The most important thing spoken during this whole crisis was when Mubarak told President Obama that he didn't understand Egyptian (Arab) culture.

Mubarak meant that in Arab culture you don't give an inch unless you are prepared to have your enemy take a mile. If you back down, you're kicked down. Once that process starts the result is not a slippery slope, it's an avalanche. Unlike the American leadership, Mubarak and his colleagues know that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a group of social welfare advocates or moderate reformers.

They have watched as one place after another - Iran, the Gaza Strip, and then Lebanon - has fallen to revolutionary Islamists. And they saw how in nearby Algeria when the gates of power were opened the result was a civil war in which tens of thousands of people died.

So Mubarak delegated power to equally tough Vice President Omar Suleiman to handle a regime-directed reform policy. There will be a constitutional committee and a national dialogue. But that means the current rulers, not the protesters, are going to decide just what reforms there are going to be.

In confronting the protests, the regime clearly has the full support of the army. They know very well that this is going to inflame the opposition and there's going to be violence. They signal that they are prepared to meet it with force if necessary.

Protester holds Arabic sign which reads 'Mubarak, No listen, talk, speak.' (Fawzy/AP)

While the demonstrators thought the speech would end with Mubarak retiring to go abroad, it ended with Suleiman telling them to go home. Now there will be a period of clashes and a test of wills. If the protests crumble, the regime will have won. No doubt, there will be increased violence, as happened in the 1990s when hundreds of people died. Yet the military will see it out and prevail.

This is going to be accompanied by some changes including, one would think, subsidies that lead to lower food prices. Yet little or no real power will be yielded. There will be elections for a new president in September. But how will "free" elections be defined? It is hard to see the Muslim Brotherhood being made legal.

The challenge thrown down by Mubarak is especially clear to the Brotherhood: Do you want to fight or submit?