By Adrian Calamel
After great anticipation the Trump administration started designating the Muslim Brotherhood with the organization’s Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese branches landing on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. For too long the West has failed to understand, turned a blind eye, or in the worst case openly promoted the Ikhwan as a benevolent political organization and stabilizing factor in Egypt during the Obama administration. The Trump State Department under Marco Rubio recognizes the Muslim Brotherhood as a radical Islamist movement that uses propaganda to inflame tensions and undermine stability. Through these tactics, it exploits power vacuums and, when necessary, resorts to violence to pursue its maximalist ideological goals.
The designation represents a decisive and necessary step in countering extremist influence by imposing robust sanctions, freezing assets, and criminalizing any form of material support to the Muslim Brotherhood branches in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. By cutting off critical financial and logistical lifelines, the policy directly undermines the operational capacity of the Muslim Brotherhood to fuel instability and violence. This action also strengthens U.S. alignment with key regional alliesincluding Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirateswho have praised the move as essential to protecting both regional and international security. Importantly, the designation has the potential to disrupt Hamas-linked funding networks, thereby reducing the resources available for violent activity and contributing to greater stability in the Gaza–Israel conflict. This policy may be viewed as a proactive measure to defend strategic partners, deter extremist financing, and restore order in a region long plagued by destabilizing forces. The Brotherhood is already banned in both Egypt and Jordan but the situation in Lebanon is different with the branch holding a seat in parliament and its military wing, the Dawn Forces, are closely tied to Hamas and coordinated with Hezbollah when targeting Israel with rockets after October 7th, 20023. The Dawn Forces have shown clear violations of the 1989 Taif Agreement and Lebanese law, triggering a legal and constitutional obligation for the Aoun government to dismantle their armed “military wing.” Moreover, prohibiting the group’s so-called “political wing” would require little to no political capital, as such a move aligns with existing legal frameworks rather than representing a controversial policy shift.
The Trump administration’s designation of key Muslim Brotherhood branches marks a long overdue correction in Western policy toward a movement that has consistently cloaked extremist ambitions in the language of political participation. By treating the Brotherhood as the destabilizing force it is rather than a legitimate political actor the United States has taken a firm stand in defense of regional order allied security and the rule of law.
