https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21369/trump-muslim-brotherhood-terrorists
For Trump to make genuine progress in bringing peace and stability to the region in his second term, though, his administration must first focus on the root cause of much of the unrest blighting the region.
In response to the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent ideology, a number of pro-Western Arab regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, have designated the organisation as a terrorist entity.
The need for the world’s major Western democracies to take firm action against the Muslim Brotherhood has become even more urgent following the October 7 attacks, with militant groups inspired by the Brotherhood’s ideology said to be responsible for provoking anti-Jewish riots on American university campuses and staging weekly hate marches in many European capitals, such as London.
[Ed] Husain, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is among a number of Middle East experts arguing in favour of the incoming Trump administration designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. He argues that such a move would “force Europe to reconsider the financial, media and mosque networks used by Iran and the Brotherhood in their own countries to project power back into the Middle East.”
At the same time Trump should confront the Gulf state of Qatar over its blatant double standards in supporting terror groups such as Hamas, whose leaders have drawn heavily on the Muslim Brotherhood’s dogma, while at the same time pretending to be an ally of the West.
[Qatar’s state-owned media] described the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history as a “heroic operation,” a “miracle” and a “historic turning point” that restored the honour of the Muslim nation, while placing the Palestinian cause back on the world’s agenda.
Qatar played a similar role during the Afghan conflict, when its willingness to provide Taliban negotiators with a base in Doha ultimately resulted in the Taliban regaining power in Kabul, re-establishing its uncompromising Islamist rule over the Afghan people.
While the Qataris maintain that their mediation efforts on the Gaza conflict are aimed at ending the bloodshed, their real motive is to ensure that Hamas, the group whose terrorist infrastructure they have helped to finance, survives the conflict, enabling it to maintain its threatening presence on Israel’s southern border. This mission of Qatar’s is a goal about which President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and even President Trump himself, might not be aware.
Given Qatar’s overt sympathy for the Hamas cause, at the very least the Trump administration should undertake a serious review of its dealings with Doha, and consider relocating the US military’s Al Udeid Air Base from Qatar to a more friendly location in the region, such as the United Arab Emirates.
If US President Donald Trump is really serious about making a positive impact on the Middle East, a good place for him to start would be to designate the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement as a terrorist organisation and scale down Washington’s ties with the Gulf state of Qatar.
Since he won re-election, there has been much speculation that Trump, architect of the ground-breaking Abraham Accords, intends to use his second term in office to negotiate a wide-ranging peace deal aimed at bringing lasting stability to the Middle East.
Before he had even taken office, Trump was credited with helping to finalise the Gaza ceasefire deal, after he threatened that “all hell will break out” if Hamas did not release the remaining Israeli hostages held in captivity.
More recently, he has called on Egypt and Jordan to accommodate displaced Palestinians in Gaza in order to “clean out” the enclave after significant areas of the territory have been reduced to rubble following 15 months of intense fighting between Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists and Israel.
