The stage has finally been set for the long expected inauguration of direct ties between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic group. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won nearly half of the seats in lower parliamentary house elections, the first since Hosni Mubarak's 11 February ouster.

US officials, including the State Department's second highest ranking diplomat, William Burns, have recently met with leaders of the FJP.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, widely seen as Washington's emissary for quiet diplomacy, met with Mohammad Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, his deputy and the group's key strategist, Khairat El-Shatter and FJP chief Mohamed Morsi.

The encounters have been dubbed historic. They certainly underscore a fundamental shift in US policy towards Egypt's Islamists, long shunned as pariahs by the United States, which favoured Mubarak's autocracy, a willing ally it enlisted to advance its regional interests.

At a time when the United States' Middle East diplomacy  is mired in a stalemate over Iran's nuclear program and fears of a new war that would disrupt oil supplies, the rise of Islamists triggered by the revolutions of the Arab Spring appears to be taking central stage in US regional foreign policy.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland described Burns' discussion with Morsi as an opportunity to reinforce US expectations that Egypt's new government will support human rights, women's rights and religious tolerance and uphold Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

An unidentified US official, whose language was devoid of diplomatic subtlety, said the discussions centred on "how the United States, World Bank and the rest of the international community can help Egypt's fragile economy rebound after last year's revolution."

Translation: Washington is ready to support a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood and continue its economic and military assistance to Egypt, provided the group abides to the moderate platform it has been propagating since Mubarak's downfall, including a clear commitment to the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

However, there seems to be a stark difference of emphasis in the Muslim Brotherhood's version of the backroom discussions that included another follow-up meeting between Badie and US ambassador to Egypt Anne W. Patterson.

According to two statements posted on the Brotherhood’s website, Badie told Carter and Patterson that the United States should "respect the will of the people" and "deal with the elected representatives." He also insisted that Washington should change its policy towards Palestine, "the Arab and Islamic world's grand cause." Morsi, meanwhile, said he told Burns that US-Egyptian relations "must be balanced."

Translation again: (1) The United States should conduct its relations with Egypt primarily through the channels of the Brotherhood, being the largest and most influential political force in post-Mubarak Egypt. (2) While the group will honor the Camp David Accords with Israel as long as it is deemed necessary, it will not abandon the Palestinians. (3) Washington should stop taking Egypt for granted and it should deal with Brotherhood-ruled country on an equal footing.

Notwithstanding the verbal contest and lack of clarity, the fact remains that Washington, forced by changes brought about by the Arab Spring, seems to have started a process to create a workable relationship, and probably a division of labour, with the Brotherhood.

Gone are the days when the Brotherhood was the bogeyman. Welcome to pragmatism, America's famed diplomatic tool for balancing ties and interests with one-time ideological enemies.

Flirtation between the United States and Islamists is nothing new. During the Cold War, Islamic groups received support and even funds from the United States when both were engaged against communists, leftists and pan-Arabists. During Carter's administration a temporary marriage between the United States and the Islamists reached its peak in Afghanistan when they united to fight the Soviets.

The Obama administration has so far kept a low profile with regard to the talks with the Brotherhood leaders, raising fundamental questions on whether the United States has already forged a coherent strategy with a clear direction on how to deal with Islamist-ruled Egypt in a post-Arab Spring era.

Large unanswered questions also remain about the broader issue of US global strategy towards Islamists. The Brotherhood in some ways is an Islamic Internationalism, whose memberships stretch from Indonesia to Morocco, and one wonders if Washington is willing to recognise it also as the main group that speaks for the world's Islamists.

No-one knows how this new US love affair with the Islamists will evolve, but if it turns out to be a marriage of convenience, the broader consequences and macro outcomes of Washington's new pragmatic approach will be more nuanced.

Washington's role in post-Arab Spring Egypt should be to support a home grown democratic agenda. In the context of Egypt and the Middle East today, this means it should avoid tactics and manoeuvrings which weaken and undermine the democratic camp.

Egyptian democrats will feel betrayed if they find themselves handicapped by a new wall of Washington's vested interests and unilateralism. Mohamed ElBaradei's decision to drop his presidential bid was as much a protest against Washington's lack of direction as over the military’s failures in running the transitional period.

The contacts with Egypt's Brotherhood also should not be an exercise in diplomatic engagement only for the sake of highlighting the conventional US Middle East agenda – mainly peace with Israel in exchange for good working relationships. The United States should stop eyeing Egypt through the lens of Israel and thus avoid tying its economic assistance to Egypt with a string of conditions related to the Israeli state’s perception of peace.

As for the Brotherhood, there is one thing that is certain; that the result of the dialogue with the United States will turn into a strategic muddle if the new approach is not guided by a clearly calculated and principled vision that will take Egypt to the future. One of the lessons of the January 25 Revolution is that change can come without America. The other lesson is that pressure for democratic governance will grow now whatever Washington does or does not do. 

The Brotherhood is both a national political program and a movement in the history of Islam and it should be alert to both Egypt's strategic imperatives and the necessity of realising the revolution’s goals of bread, freedom and human dignity. Its legitimacy should not be defined and obtained through bargaining and compromise, but rather by working hard to fulfil the revolution's objectives and Egyptians' aspirations.