Although it hasn’t yet gotten wide attention, this announcement that a leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood plans to run for the presidency as an independent candidate is important. Up to now, it’s been assumed that the Brotherhood would not put up a presidential candidate, leaving Amr Moussa the likely victor in a presidential election. That, in itself, would be bad enough, given possible Islamist domination of parliament. (For more on this, see Barry’s Rubin’s take.) But now it looks as though, while the Muslim Brotherhood’s new party will officially refrain from running a presidential candidate, as promised, a key Muslim Brotherhood leader will nonetheless stand for the presidency as an independent. I’ve seen only one report on this so far. Maybe further developments will show this to have been a false alarm. But it could well be a disturbing sign that the Muslim Brotherhood is within reach of controlling both parliament and the presidency in a new Egypt. (See the Barry Rubin post for more.) Of course, the army may still keep the Brotherhood under some limited check. Even so, we may soon enter very dangerous territory indeed.