The resolution comes at a second when the Brotherhood’s as soon as fastidiously cultivated picture because the respectable face of political Islam lies in tatters. Days earlier than Trump’s govt order, Texas Governor Greg Abbott made his state the primary to label each the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist entities, vowing to focus on what he known as “radical extremists.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis adopted the transfer by Texas along with his personal comparable govt order. With federal momentum now behind him, the designations threatens to cascade throughout the area—and doubtlessly past.
“Hamas was based because the Egyptian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and has made this very clear in its Charter of 1987,” Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director of the Counter Extremism Project, tells The Cipher Brief. “The political assertion of Hamas of 2017 didn’t point out this hyperlink particularly, but it surely additionally didn’t state that Hamas could be unbiased. Hence, Hamas stays a part of the Muslim Brotherhood community.”
Roots of a Transnational Shadow
To grasp the stakes, the story should start in Ismailia, Egypt, in 1928, when schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna based the Ikhwan al-Muslimin as a motion of Islamic revival and social reform. What began with Quranic classes and charity work exploded right into a mass group of lots of of 1000’s by the Forties, full with a secret paramilitary wing, the Special Apparatus, that carried out bombings and assassinations towards British forces and Jewish targets. Egypt banned the group in 1948; al-Banna was assassinated shortly afterward, nearly definitely by state safety.
Heavy-handed crackdowns, durations of lodging, and notable ideological shifts have outlined the Brotherhood’s trajectory since then.
Officially, the Brotherhood renounced violence within the Nineteen Seventies, and it constructed an unmatched community of mosques, clinics, colleges, and labor unions. The 2011 Arab Spring briefly catapulted it to energy: Mohamed Morsi turned Egypt’s first elected president in 2012. Fourteen months later, mass protests and a army coup ended the experiment. Egypt declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group in 2013, killed greater than 1,000 supporters in a single day at Rabaa Square, and imprisoned tens of 1000’s extra. Exiled, splintered, and radicalized, remnants went underground or appeared to Gaza.
Fernando Caravajal, govt director at The American Center for South Yemen Studies and an knowledgeable in Sudanese affairs, tells The Cipher Brief that the Brotherhood’s ideological flexibility permits it to reemerge in energy vacuums, however cautions that the potential United States terrorist designation seemingly stems from outdoors pursuits.
“Notice the timing: these statements got here per week after the assembly with Saudi,” he mentioned. “It wasn’t introduced through the assembly, so we will’t say Saudis are brazenly pushing it, however they clearly have a hand behind it due to the timing, due to the content material. It mentions Jordan and Lebanon — these are Saudi priorities.”
Riyadh’s priorities middle on containing Islamist actions and curbing Iranian affect within the Levant, making Jordan and Lebanon key arenas for Riyadh’s regional safety technique.
Across the area, native chapters tailored in numerous methods. Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) turned the dominion’s most organized opposition, operating hospitals and colleges and holding parliamentary seats. Lebanon’s looser community operates in Palestinian camps alongside Hezbollah. Both insist they’re peaceable and gradualist.
“It is essential to grasp that the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and violence is a tactical one,” Schindler mentioned. “It can change at any level if the community feels that violence could be helpful for its place and affect.”
Past American makes an attempt to designate your entire Brotherhood collapsed amid pushback from Qatar, Turkey, and a few European allies. This time, the White House has chosen a surgical strike. According to Schindler, the White House’s endeavor to concentrate on particular person chapters is an optimum method as a result of it targets “chapters in international locations which have themselves banned and/or designated the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt, Jordan) and on Lebanon, the place the excellence between Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas is tough to make.”
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The October 7 Reckoning
The set off, finally, was October 7 and the occasions that adopted. In Lebanon, probably the most express public demonstration got here when a Brotherhood-affiliated militia calling itself the al-Fajr Forces fired rockets into northern Israel days after Hamas’s bloodbath.
“Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood group in Gaza and the West Bank. It calls itself such. However, it operates independently,” Nonresident Senior Fellow on the Atlantic Council and Former DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Policy, Thomas Warrick, tells The Cipher Brief. “Its revenues had been derived from management of Gaza’s governance: taxes, donations from outdoors governments, and prison actions from which it profited. Other MB chapters are small in budgets and manpower in comparison with Hamas.”
In Jordan, the IAF organized among the largest pro-Hamas demonstrations within the Arab world.
“The clearest demonstrated ‘hyperlink’ between Hamas and the required Muslim Brotherhood chapters is {that a} Brotherhood-affiliated group in Lebanon, al-Fajr Forces, launched rockets into Israel following the October 7 2023 Hamas terrorist assault,” Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, tells The Cipher Brief, stressing that “the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t a terrorist risk to the United States.”
In Egypt, underground networks — regardless of Sisi’s repression — funneled cash and propaganda into Gaza. Yet Schindler particularly highlights Lebanon’s darker function in Hamas’s exterior operations.
“According to German court docket paperwork, the Hamas cell that was arrested in Germany and the Netherlands in December 2023, which had deliberate and ready for terror assaults in Germany, was led by Hamas handlers in Lebanon,” he famous. “Given the shut connection between Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood community, it’s due to this fact seemingly that such contacts additionally exist in Lebanon.”
The actual energy of the designation, nonetheless, lies in America’s arsenal of monetary warfare. Once listed, any financial institution worldwide that touches Brotherhood cash in {dollars} dangers dropping entry to the United States market.
“Disrupting the flexibility of large-scale extremist and terrorist networks, such because the Muslim Brotherhood, to have unhindered entry to the worldwide monetary system is, after all, a really efficient approach to hinder their total operations,” Schindler defined. “Hence, any nation the place this entry is extra restricted is, after all, an issue for such networks as it is going to enhance their operational prices.”
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Allies on the Brink
Jordan is already on edge. Dependent on $1.5 billion in annual U.S. support and dealing with road fury over Gaza, King Abdullah II banned the Brotherhood in April 2025 — but the IAF nonetheless capabilities. While Schindler sees Washington’s doable transfer as reinforcement that may “support within the efforts of the Jordanian authorities in countering Muslim Brotherhood buildings within the nation,” Kelanic warns of unintended penalties.
“The solely state of affairs I fear about is that if the U.S. insists on making use of the FTO designation to the IAF, as a result of that quantities to main meddling in Jordanian politics,” she famous. “The last item the U.S. wants is one other failed state within the Middle East.”
Turkey, specialists level out, is maybe the larger headache. Schinder asserts that Turkey “is certainly an essential community hub for Hamas,” particularly in the case of the group’s monetary methods.
“Turkey is in a novel place to strain Hamas to surrender its weapons and energy in Gaza and depart the Strip,” he continued. “Unfortunately, up to now, the Turkish authorities doesn’t appear to have achieved so.”
According to Warrick, “what Turkey will do in response to the U.S. designation isn’t but clear.”
“Supporting Muslim Brotherhood associates within the area is a core coverage of the Turkish authorities, however President Erdoğan is conscious that his relationship with President Trump is powerful and is efficacious,” he defined. “The Turkish authorities is conscious of the Trump administration’s hostile angle in direction of the Muslim Brotherhood however isn’t more likely to change its method besides in international locations that the U.S. authorities has formally designated Brotherhood branches as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”
A senior U.S. intelligence official, talking to The Cipher Brief on background, described the administration’s delicate balancing act.
“The President comes out with an announcement the place he’s clearly attempting to not offend the Qataris an excessive amount of, however on the identical time satisfying the UAE and the Saudis and the Egyptians,” the insider famous. “He’s driving the fence on this however skewing extra to the anti-side.”
Washington is especially cautious of antagonizing Doha as a result of Qatar stays a vital mediator with Islamist actions and an indispensable interlocutor in hostage, de-escalation, and regional disaster negotiations. The Qatar-based Brotherhood chapter formally disbanded in 1999, and Doha has repeatedly denied formal help for the Muslim Brotherhood, regardless of continued investigations indicating the group’s ongoing monetary backing and reward from the likes of Hamas.
That identical insider predicted home ripple results: “If we all of the sudden see a ton of states passing legal guidelines towards the Brotherhood and CAIR, then we begin to have some actual home impacts.”
CAIR has lengthy confronted allegations of historic ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as a result of a few of its early founders had been concerned with U.S.-based organizations linked to Brotherhood-affiliated networks, and since it was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” within the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case. Critics cite these associations as proof of ideological or organizational overlap. However, no prison fees had been ever introduced towards CAIR, and no direct operational hyperlink to the Brotherhood has been confirmed. CAIR denies any affiliation, and a lot of the proof stays circumstantial, dated, and closely disputed.
Analysts additionally level out that Saudi Arabia and the UAE, each of which already listing the Brotherhood as terrorists, are quietly celebrating. But not everybody agrees that an FTO designation is a step in the best route.
“Doing a blanket itemizing of ‘the Muslim Brotherhood’ is a large threat for the U.S.,” Caravajal mentioned. “It permits individuals to be arrested merely for going to the unsuitable mosque.”
For a motion that has survived bans, coups, and massacres for nearly a century, that is solely the most recent take a look at.
“The downside with designating the Muslim Brotherhood is that it by no means was a unitary group or perhaps a franchise group like Al-Qaeda or Da’esh,” Warrick added. “This is why the answer the Trump administration got here up with is the proper one. By working with companions which have already outlawed or sanctioned the Muslim Brotherhood chapters of their international locations, the U.S. authorities can work cooperatively with these international locations. This method additionally provides some readability to individuals in these international locations, which teams they should keep away from so as to not be sanctioned by OFAC.”
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