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15-01-2026
WASHINGTON: The United States has designated Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as “terrorist” groups, the administration of President Donald Trump announces, as Washington intensifies its crackdown on Israel’s rivals across the world.
The decision on Tuesday came weeks after Trump issued an executive order directing his administration to start the process of blacklisting the groups.
The US Treasury labeled the groups in Jordan and Egypt as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” and the State Department blacklisted the Lebanese organization with a more serious designation “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO).
The Trump administration cited alleged support for the Palestinian group Hamas and “activities against Israeli interests in the Middle East” as the driving reason behind targeting the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood purport to be legitimate civic organizations while, behind the scenes, they explicitly and enthusiastically support terrorist groups like Hamas,” the US Treasury said in a statement.
The designations make it illegal to provide material support to the groups. They also impose economic sanctions to choke their revenue streams. The FTO label carries the added penalty of banning members of the group from entering the US.
The Muslim Brotherhood
Established in 1928 by Egyptian Muslim scholar Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood has offshoots and branches across the Middle East, including political parties and social organizations.
The group and its affiliates say they are committed to peaceful political participation.
The Muslim Brotherhood chapter in Lebanon, known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, is represented in the Lebanese Parliament.
In Jordan, the group won 31 House of Representatives seats in the 2024 elections through its political arm, the Islamic Action Front but Amman banned the organization last year, accusing it of links to what the Jordanian government called a sabotage plot. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood won the country’s only democratically held presidential election in 2012 but President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown a year later in a military coup and died in jail in 2019.
Cairo has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and launched a sweeping crackdown against the group’s leaders and members since 2013, driving the organization underground and into exile.
Muslim Brotherhood organizations have been vocal critics of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza within their countries.
Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya in Lebanon backed Hezbollah in its “support front” in solidarity with Gaza against Israel, which culminated in an all-out war in September 2024.
After Trump’s decree in November, Lebanese Parliament Member Imad al-Hout stressed that al-Jamaa al-Islamiya is a licensed political organization in Lebanon with no affiliation with foreign forces.
“The evaluation of any Lebanese political force is exclusively governed by the Lebanese constitution and laws, and not by external political classifications related to contexts linked to American interests and policies that support the Israeli enemy and are unrelated to the Lebanese reality,” al-Hout said in a statement.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also rejected Trump’s order noting that previous administrations had declined to blacklist the group.
“The facts have not changed. What has changed is the level of foreign pressure on the United States, particularly from the UAE and Israel, to adopt policies that serve external agendas rather than the interests of the American people,” the group said in a statement in November. (Int’l News Desk)
