  Static quark-anti-quark potential encodes important information on the
chromodynamical interaction between color charges, and recent lattice results
show its very nontrivial behavior near the deconfinement temperature $T_c$. In
this paper we study such potential in the framework of the ``magnetic
scenario'' for the near Tc QCD plasma, and particularly focus on the linear
part (as quantified by its slope, the tension) in the potential as well as the
strong splitting between the free energy and internal energy. By using an
analytic ``ellipsoidal bag'' model, we will quantitatively relate the free
energy tension to the magnetic condensate density and relate the internal
energy tension to the thermal monopole density. By converting the lattice
results for static potential into density for thermal monopoles we find the
density to be very large around Tc and indicate at quantum coherence, in good
agreement with direct lattice calculation of such density. A few important
consequences for heavy ion collisions phenomenology will also be discussed.
