Politicization of Terrorism Designations on Behalf of Foreign Regime Interests Undermines U.S. National Security, Threatens Domestic and International Civil Society Groups
(Washington, D.C., January 14, 2026) — The Trump administration's January 13, 2026 terrorism designations of the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood organizations lack sufficient factual and policy justification and will not advance U.S. national interests, said DAWN today. These measures will also encourage further repression against civil society groups by both the United States and abusive Middle East governments.
"The meritless designations of the Lebanese, Egyptian, and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood organizations are a product of intense lobbying and propaganda campaigns by the Israeli, Emirati, Jordanian, and Egyptian governments to serve their own nefarious interests," said Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's executive director. "The Trump administration has offered not a shred of evidence that any of these groups has committed any acts of terrorism, instead offering the designations as political rewards to these regimes."
The State Department announced yesterday that it had designated the Lebanese Sunni political party, al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, which is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. § 1189) (INA). The party currently has one seat in Lebanon's parliament. The statute requires the government to find that a foreign organization has engaged in terrorism and is a threat to U.S. national security. The Treasury Department also designated the group as a Specially Designated Terrorist Organization (SDTO) pursuant to Executive Order 13224 (EO), allowing the Treasury Department to freeze the assets and ban from travel members of the organization. The Department claimed that the Lebanese group's armed wing, the al-Fajr Forces, had carried out attacks on Israel during the Gaza war, but offered no evidence that these attacks were "terrorist" in nature or that its operations threatened U.S. security interests.
The U.S. Treasury Department also announced that it was designating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as SDTOs under the EO, but stopped short of designating them as terrorist organizations under the INA statute. As a result, while the Trump administration can now bring criminal charges against U.S. persons for providing "material support" to the Lebanese political party al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, it can not bring charges based on support for the Egyptian or Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood.
"Targeting and excluding Islamic groups under the banner of counterterrorism ultimately weakens the broader fight against extremism." said Jamal al-Tahat, Senior Advisor at DAWN. "This campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood is already being used to target Muslim civil society groups in the U.S. on baseless claims that they are tied to the organization."
The Egyptian government banned the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in December 2013, following the coup by General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. The only democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsy, was affiliated with the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political party. The Treasury Department, which announced the SDTO designation, offered no evidence whatsoever about any terrorist attacks by the defunct group that has not existed in over a decade; it vaguely alleges that they have "coordinated possible terrorist activities against Israeli interests" and that Hamas has "worked" with the Egyptian Brotherhood to "undermine the Egyptian government."
Similarly, the Trump administration vaguely alleges that "elements with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan" have "been involved in terrorist cases in Jordan" and that members of the group in Jordan have manufactured weapons. None of this constitutes evidence of terrorism, understood to be planning or executing deliberate attacks on civilians for political purposes. The Jordanian government banned the country's Muslim Brotherhood organization in April 2025, but did not ban the Islamic Action Front, the political party associated with the group, after the party won a plurality of the country's parliamentary elections in 2024.
"The flimsiness of the evidence cited for these designations contrasts sharply with the scale of lobbying by the Israeli, Egyptian, Emirati, and Jordanian regimes to secure them," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "The Trump administration has conflated the security interests of foreign dictatorships with U.S. interests, to the detriment of our nation's commitment to democracy, rule of law and security."
The Trump administration's more narrow designations follow over a decade of lobbying efforts seeking to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a global organization, even though no such global organization exists. There are currently three bills pending in Congress that would require the administration to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a global terrorist organization. The governors of Texas and Florida recently designated the "global" Muslim Brotherhood and the U.S. based non-profit organization, the Council of American Islamic Relations, as terrorist organizations but it's unclear whether they have the authority to make such designations or whether they will have any practical impact.
"There's an entire industry of pro-Israel, pro-dictatorship lobbying groups in Washington who want to shut down democratic civil society movements, at home and abroad, that challenge U.S. policy in the Middle East," said Mohammad Fadel, DAWN Non-Resident Fellow and University of Toronto Professor of Law. "These designations are in no small part designed to silence Americans advocating for an end to U.S. support for abusive regimes in the Middle East."
