U.S. designates Muslim Brotherhood branches in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan as terrorist groups

The Trump administration on Tuesday formally branded three branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, a first-of-its-kind move that thrusts one of the Arab world’s oldest Islamist movements onto Washington’s terror lists and sharpens U.S. efforts to cut off support for Hamas after the Gaza war.

Three branches designated

In coordinated actions announced Jan. 13 by the State and Treasury departments, the Lebanese branch of the Brotherhood, known locally as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah (the Islamic Group), was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under U.S. immigration law and also labeled a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The Egyptian and Jordanian branches were separately added to the SDGT sanctions list for what U.S. officials said was long-standing material support to Hamas.

The Lebanese group’s secretary-general, Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh, was also individually sanctioned as an SDGT, freezing any assets under U.S. jurisdiction and barring American citizens and companies from doing business with him.

A narrower approach than a blanket ban

The designations cap years of internal debate in Washington over whether to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Sunni Islamist movement that operates through national chapters whose activities range from charity work and parliamentary politics to armed insurgency.

By moving against specific branches rather than declaring the entire global movement a terrorist organization, the administration adopted a narrower, chapter-by-chapter approach that officials say targets violent affiliates tied to Hamas. Civil liberties advocates and some analysts warn the shift still risks blurring the line between terrorism and nonviolent political Islam and could reverberate through U.S. relations with Muslim communities at home and allies abroad.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the designations “reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs.”

“We will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism,” Rubio said.

What the labels mean

Under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, FTO status makes it a federal crime for anyone subject to U.S. jurisdiction to knowingly provide “material support or resources” — including money, training, services or personnel — to the Lebanese group. It also renders members and supporters inadmissible to the United States and can trigger removal proceedings against noncitizens.

All three branches’ SDGT designations, made under Executive Order 13224, require U.S. financial institutions to block assets and prohibit most transactions with them. Non-U.S. persons who provide material support could themselves face secondary sanctions.

The Lebanese Islamic Group now joins organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah in holding both FTO and SDGT status.

Rationale: alleged links to Hamas

Treasury officials framed the moves as part of a broader attempt to target what they described as the Brotherhood’s role in nurturing and sustaining Hamas, which the United States has listed as a terrorist organization since 1997.

“For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has inspired, nurtured and funded terrorist groups like Hamas,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. It accused the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of conspiring with Hamas “to support Hamas’s terrorism and undermine the sovereignty of their own national governments.”

The actions implement a Nov. 24, 2025, executive order in which President Donald Trump directed his administration to review certain Brotherhood chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan for possible terror designation. That order came amid an intensified U.S. campaign against Hamas and its networks following the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza that followed.

A White House fact sheet at the time said the Lebanese Islamic Group’s armed wing joined Hamas, Hezbollah and other factions in firing rockets at Israeli military and civilian targets after Oct. 7. It also cited U.S. intelligence alleging that senior figures in the Egyptian and Jordanian Brotherhoods had coordinated with Hamas and accepted funding to destabilize their own governments and threaten U.S. partners.

Background: a movement with divergent chapters

Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Sunni Islamist movement that seeks to order public life according to its interpretation of Islamic principles. Over the decades, it has spread through affiliated groups and sympathizers across the Middle East and beyond, some of which participate in elections and provide social services, while others have maintained armed wings or spawned militant offshoots.

Hamas itself traces its ideological roots to the Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter described it as the “Palestinian branch” of the organization, language that later documents softened but did not fully disavow.

Country-by-country implications

Egypt

The Egyptian Brotherhood — the original and most influential branch — has been at the heart of U.S. debates over designation. After the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime President Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won parliamentary elections, and its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, became Egypt’s first elected president in 2012.

Morsi was removed by then-Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a 2013 military takeover, and Egypt’s new authorities quickly declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, jailed thousands of its members and drove much of its leadership into exile.

Since then, Cairo has pressed Western governments to follow its lead. Tuesday’s move by Washington, while limited to the Egyptian branch’s SDGT status, aligns U.S. policy more closely with President Sisi’s long-standing portrayal of the Brotherhood as a security threat.

Jordan

In Jordan, the Brotherhood has for decades been one of the country’s largest opposition forces, often tolerated as a legal social and political movement. That arrangement unraveled in recent years as internal splits and lawsuits led to the dissolution of the main Brotherhood society in a 2020 court ruling.

On April 23, 2025, Jordan’s Interior Ministry formally banned the organization, declared all its activities illegal and began confiscating its assets and closing offices.

The U.S. sanctions on the Jordanian branch reinforce that domestic crackdown, signaling explicit American backing for the monarchy’s hard line.

Lebanon

The Lebanese chapter, by contrast, has been a recognized part of Lebanon’s crowded sectarian party landscape. Founded in 1964, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah has held seats in parliament and local councils, drawing support mainly from Sunni constituencies.

Its armed wing, known as the al-Fajr Forces, has a history of guerrilla activity against Israel and has at times coordinated tactically with Hezbollah despite Lebanon’s Sunni-Shiite divide.

U.S. officials say it is that combination of political and military roles, and the group’s alleged involvement in attacks after Oct. 7, that prompted the rare step of applying both FTO and SDGT labels.

Regional and domestic fallout

The designations are likely to reverberate throughout the region.

In Egypt and Jordan, where the Brotherhood has already been outlawed, the U.S. action is expected to be welcomed by governments that have long sought international backing for their campaigns against the movement.

In Lebanon, analysts say the FTO listing could complicate already fraught coalition-building. Any government that includes or cooperates closely with al-Jamaa may find it harder to maintain military and financial assistance from Western donors wary of entanglement with a group on the U.S. terror list. The decision could also affect fundraising among the Lebanese diaspora, especially in the Gulf and North America, where banks are now required to block transactions.

The move may also deepen fault lines in U.S. relations with Qatar and Turkey, two key regional partners that have hosted or provided political space to Brotherhood-linked figures and parties. Both play central roles as interlocutors with Hamas and as actors in Gaza reconstruction and regional diplomacy. Diplomats and analysts have warned that an expanded U.S. campaign against Brotherhood networks could strain those relationships, though both governments had yet to issue detailed public reactions by Tuesday.

Domestically, civil rights and Muslim advocacy organizations have for years cautioned that any federal terror label touching the Brotherhood could have a chilling effect on charitable giving and civic engagement, given how broadly U.S. “material support” laws can be applied.

In an earlier letter opposing a blanket Brotherhood designation, a coalition of more than 80 groups led by the Brennan Center for Justice warned that such steps could “stigmatize and target American Muslim civil society” and invite investigations or prosecutions based on tenuous associations.

Those fears have been sharpened by recent state-level actions. In late 2025, the governors of Texas and Florida issued proclamations branding the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as terrorist organizations in their states, moves that carry primarily symbolic and contracting consequences but drew lawsuits and sharp criticism from Muslim groups, which called them unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Supporters of Tuesday’s designations, including Republican lawmakers who pushed legislation urging the administration to act, argue that the chapter-focused approach answers many of those concerns by zeroing in on specific organizations accused of funding or engaging in violence.

“Our focus is on those branches that have crossed the line from political activism into terrorist support and operational coordination,” a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “This is not about criminalizing a belief system.”

For now, the practical impact of the sanctions may be limited by the fact that all three branches have already been constrained at home — outlawed in Egypt and Jordan, and operating inside a shattered Lebanese economy where access to the U.S. financial system is already thin.

But the designations mark a clear policy turn: for the first time, Washington has moved from arguing over whether the Muslim Brotherhood is part of the problem to treating parts of it, in legal terms, as part of the same terrorist infrastructure it sees in Hamas.

Whether the new chapter-by-chapter strategy remains confined to branches the U.S. links directly to violence, or broadens into a wider campaign against Islamist political movements, is likely to shape U.S. ties with key Middle Eastern partners — and with Muslim communities at home — long after the immediate headlines fade.