It is no longer possible to treat the US decision of 13 January, which placed the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan on the Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) list, as a mere technical legal measure or an isolated administrative step.
What occurred is, rather, a belated political declaration of the failure of a long-standing gamble, during which Western circles sought to present the Muslim Brotherhood as “moderate, manageable political Islam” or as a lower-cost alternative to violent extremism, justifying their support and enabling their rise to power.
The deeper significance of this decision lies in the collapse of the strategic foundation upon which entire Western policies were built after 2011, when the group was promoted as the ideal model of “moderate political Islam,” allegedly capable of controlling societies, managing public order, and countering violent extremism.
Experience has shown that this perspective was a misleading simplification, ignoring the group’s closed ideological nature and its high capacity to reproduce itself through different means without abandoning its core objectives.
Essentially, this decision marks the end of an old illusion: that one can separate the group’s ideological and organizational discourse from its transnational networks of funding, mobilization, influence, and terrorism.
When major branches of the organization are classified as terrorist entities and any form of direct or indirect material support is criminalized, the political message becomes clearer than any official statement: the new phase demands absolute clarity, leaving no room for political manoeuvring or evasion.
Legally and financially, the designation imposes strict restrictions, including asset freezes, transaction bans, and expanded criminal liability.
More importantly, it removes the political cover that allowed funding to flow under the guise of charitable work, community activity, or “support for democracy” for years. These channels, skillfully exploited to sustain the organization, have been abruptly closed, without incurring direct political costs.
Politically, the decision reveals a belated alignment of the United States with the positions of regional states, notably Egypt, which had long warned of the group’s dangers, not as a political adversary, but as a transnational organization threatening the very concept of the nation-state.
This alignment does not reflect an ethical awakening, but rather a delayed realization that ignoring this danger was part of the problem, not the solution.
Conversely, the decision places other countries in a genuine political and moral dilemma. States that provided organizational safe havens, media platforms, or political cover to the Muslim Brotherhood now face a direct and urgent question: Is it still defensible to continue these policies, or has the cost exceeded the benefit?
The contradiction between a strategic partnership with Washington and hosting an organization whose branches are classified as terrorists can no longer be masked by rhetoric or political justification.
At the individual level, the decision delivers a severe blow to networks of movement and mobility that long benefited from the gap between political discourse and criminal law.
Immigration, asylum, and residency matters are no longer managed according to the logic of “political activity,” but rather based on potential security risks, which will translate into stricter vetting, rejection of applications, and possibly reopening previously closed cases.
In this context, monitoring the reactions of countries such as Turkey and Qatar, as well as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the European Union as a whole, becomes crucial. These actors are now more than ever called upon to define their position clearly: either align with this shift and re-evaluate their policies toward the group or persist with approaches that have lost relevance and, experience has shown, generate instability more than integration.
The US decision ends an entire phase of covert political complicity and opens the door to redefining the relationship between the West and transnational terrorist organizations.
The real question is not whether Washington has changed its stance, but which other capitals will have the courage to acknowledge that the bet has failed.
The answer will be measured by their willingness to follow this transformation or by their persistence in clinging to political illusions that have lost all validity.
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*The writer is a senator and a former assistant to the foreign minister.
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