Israel relishes in Trump's Muslim Brotherhood crackdown as Gulf shrugs it off

US President Donald Trump has toyed with declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group since his first administration. An executive order he recently signed to designate some of the group’s affiliates put him a step closer, but it landed as a dud.

An Arab official who spoke with Middle East Eye brushed off the move as “symbolic”, while a western diplomat in the Gulf who spoke with MEE called it “forgettable”.

The loudest reaction came from diehard pro-Israel voices in the US, like Laura Loomer.

“We were all gaslit,” Loomer said, decrying that Trump’s executive order, which set up a review of some Muslim Brotherhood-aligned entities but stopped short of designating them terror groups, did not go far enough.

Experts say that the muted response from the region and the laser-like focus from pro-Israel activists underscores how much the Middle East has changed between Trump’s two terms.

“There doesn’t seem to be a major Gulf dimension to this push, like there was in the first Trump term. It seems that Loomer, and some elements of the Maga base, are behind it,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, an expert on the Gulf at the Baker Institute, told MEE.

'The greatest interest to Israel'

The Muslim Brotherhood is most commonly known in the Arab world as a political party founded on Islamic principles and laws.

It was established in Egypt in the late 1920s in opposition to British colonial rule. Later, it was outlawed and attacked by nationalist Arab rulers like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hafez al-Assad of Syria.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not monolithic. Many political parties have aligned with it, like Ennahda in Tunisia and Yemen’s al-Islah. But it is more accurately characterised as a movement that serves as an inspiration to numerous religio-political parties across the Muslim world.

In addition to states like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which are opposed to it, the Muslim Brotherhood has always had genuine domestic opponents.

'I think the reason we [the US] are doing this, is because Israel wants the US to do it'

- Rose Kelanic, Defense Priorities

But one of the factors that cuts across the group's many branches is sympathy with the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel. Hamas, which has an armed and political wing, originated as an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is not a terror threat to the US,” Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East programme at Defense Priorities, told MEE. “The argument people make is that it could be a threat to Israel.”

“I think the reason we [the US] are doing this, is because Israel wants the US to do it,” she added.

Crack down on Palestinian-Israeli parties?

Trump’s executive order did not name Turkey, for example, a Nato ally where the Muslim Brotherhood is not outlawed and has many supporters. Instead, it said the US would begin a process to examine whether to designate Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in the spring, and Egypt outlawed it after the ousting of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

Lebanon’s Sunni political party, Jamaa al-Islamiya, is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Like the Shia Hezbollah, it has an armed wing, the Fajr Forces, which Israel has targeted with strikes.

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“These are the countries of greatest interest to Israel. If Trump follows through, it would strengthen the idea that Israel is surrounded by terrorist groups. This could be a US imprimatur for further Israeli attacks on Lebanon,” Kelanic said.

Kelanic said that while Trump’s move would be “seemingly low-cost” for the US, it could have implications for domestic Israeli politics as Netanyahu seeks to remain in office amid a corruption trial.

Netanyahu said last week that Israel is looking to “complete the process” of banning the Muslim Brotherhood, which Kelanic said could foreshadow a crackdown on Palestinian parties in Israel.

The United Arab List, which is led by Mansour Abbas, joined an Israeli coalition government in 2021 that temporarily ousted Netanyahu from power.

“This just gives more things on the wishlist for the hard-right in Israel that does not want Palestinian political participation,” she said.

Shifting priorities 

Trump first floated designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in 2017 when the Middle East was riven by the fallout of the Arab Spring protests.

In Tunisia and Egypt, Arab autocrats who had ruled their countries for decades fell to popular protestors. The region’s major powers split over how to deal with the movement.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was democratically elected and whose own political party goes back to a brand of Muslim populism, backed the protestors. Likewise, through its state-run news channel Al Jazeera, Qatar gave airtime to the protests.

'The battles have been fought and the region has moved on to a point'

- Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute

But the ruling families of Saudi Arabia and the UAE viewed the protests as dangerous to the region and, most importantly, to their own monarchies.

Egypt became a flashpoint.

In 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood won elections in the Arab world’s most populous state by a thin margin.

Less than a year later, democratically elected Morsi was ousted in a coup led by his defence minister-turned-current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Sisi led a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, along with secular opponents. In 2019, Sisi lobbied Trump to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organisation.

The rift over populist Islam culminated in a Saudi and Emirati blockade of Qatar that Trump endorsed in 2017. It would manifest itself in proxy wars for years after, in places like Libya.

By the time Trump left office, the region’s main powers were trying to patch up ties. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain restored relations with Qatar, signing the Al Ula agreement.

“The battles have been fought, and the region has moved on to a point,” Ulrichsen, at the Baker Institute, told MEE. 

Israel’s genocide in Gaza and war on Iran brought new concerns to the fore. For example, Egypt and Qatar led the mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel that culminated in an October ceasefire.

Alliances in the Middle East have significantly shifted.

Sudan and bad blood

A decade ago, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were aligned against Qatar, but in recent years, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have fallen out over the war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is now closely aligned with Turkey in Syria, whose Islamist president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was welcomed by Trump at the White House recently.

Libya and Yemen are still simmering with armed groups, but fighting has died down. In the region’s current hotspot, Sudan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lobbied the Trump administration against the UAE’s role in the war.

Saudi Arabia is aligned with Qatar and Turkey in backing the Sudanese Armed Forces against the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces.

There is still a lot of bad blood.

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When Qatar was attacked by Israel in September, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan was the first to visit Doha in a show of support.

But as a former senior US intelligence officer summarised to MEE about the Emirati leader’s view of the attack: “He was probably half impressed that Israel was crazy enough to go through with it, and half scared out of his mind.”

The suspicion and mistrust between the UAE and Qatar are still obvious to any watcher who meets with either side.  

The UAE was quick to trumpet Trump’s executive order against the Muslim Brotherhood, in a bid to discredit the Sudanese Armed Forces.

“Definitely,” said Anwar Gargash, an advisor to the Emirati president, when asked whether the Muslim Brotherhood’s existence in Sudan was a “significant security issue”.

“Some of the main fighting force of the Sudanese Armed Forces…has been Muslim Brotherhood-brigade driven,” he added.