Mudar Zahran
When President Donald Trump issued an executive order moving toward designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, many asked the predictable question: Why those countries?
The answer begins in one place.
Jordan.
For years, Jordan has been marketed to Washington as a model of moderation in a volatile region. Reality could not be further from the truth. Under its current king, Jordan has become a protected operating environment for the Muslim Brotherhood, and that is precisely why the kingdom belongs at the top of Washington’s list.
Far from opposing the Brotherhood, the king has partnered with it for decades.
The clearest admission came in April 2013. In an interview with The Atlantic, King Abdullah II confirmed that the relationship between the Hashemite monarchy and the Muslim Brotherhood dates back to Jordan’s civil conflict of the early 1970s. He acknowledged that the Brotherhood stood with his father, King Hussein, against Palestinian factions. Then came the most revealing line: disagreement between the monarchy and the Brotherhood, he said, amounted to “only ten percent.” That was not a diplomatic slip. It was a confession.
Years earlier, King Hussein had made matters even clearer. In a 1996 interview on Jordanian state television, he described the Muslim Brotherhood as the regime’s own political party. Not its rival. Not a tolerated nuisance. A partner. The fiction that the Jordanian monarchy and the Brotherhood are adversaries collapses under the weight of their own words.
My colleagues and I have documented this alliance for years. The record is public, consistent, and extensive. The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is not merely tolerated. It is protected, propped up, and treated as the regime’s partner.
In Washington, that illusion is finally cracking. Policymakers increasingly see that the Brotherhood in Jordan is not a local political party but part of an international ideological network operating with state protection. The Trump administration has begun treating the organization for what it is rather than accepting palace narratives at face value.
In March, I publicly urged decisive action:
Jordan’s response was predictable.
The king announced that he had “banned” the Muslim Brotherhood. What actually occurred in 2025 was the formal dissolution of a legal shell called the “Muslim Brotherhood Society,” an entity that had been defunct since 2016. At the same time, the replacement organization, the Muslim Brotherhood Association, continued operating freely.
More importantly, the king refused to shut down the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Islamic Action Front Party, which remains legal while independent secular and nationalist movements are outlawed across the country.
While Jordan has very little political freedom, the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys unrestricted freedom under the regime.
While secular activists are banned, prosecuted, and in my own case face the prospect of life imprisonment for seeking political justice, the Brotherhood remains licensed, protected, and publicly described by the Jordanian queen as “a legitimate organization.” That is not pluralism. It is state-enforced monopoly.
I documented this political engineering here:
[https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/jordan-is-palestinian]
The monarchy also dominates the legislature, yet Brotherhood figures occupy seats in both chambers. In 2018, senior Brotherhood leader Abdullah Al-Akayleh admitted the alliance on national television when he declared, “We have stood with the Hashemites at every single juncture.” That was not opposition rhetoric. It was loyalty.
I confronted this reality publicly in a BBC interview:
[https://youtu.be/JPYLb_Iqmu4?si=yoXHQGZ7JZu8AChX]
Under American pressure, the Brotherhood later announced in July 2025 that it would “dissolve itself.” Again, the state took no action. No ban followed. No arrests. No institutional shutdowns. The gesture was voluntary, symbolic, and reversible.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s financial empire remains untouched. Its principal fundraising arm, the Islamic Center Charity Society, operates freely. Its assets were estimated in the billions as early as 2007. In Jordan, political fundraising by ordinary citizens is illegal. Brotherhood fundraising is not.
The alliance does not stop with the Brotherhood.
The king has repeatedly hosted leaders of Hamas at his palace. Hamas, widely recognized as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been treated as a visiting delegation rather than a terrorist organization. Photographs from these meetings circulate openly in Arab media.
This explains why Jordan featured prominently when Washington reviewed Islamist networks across the region.
Jordan is not a side issue in the story of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the central arena where the movement has been protected, cultivated, and politically normalized. The Brotherhood is not merely present in Jordan as one movement among many; it operates as an accepted force within the system itself, with legal political access, financial protection, and institutional tolerance that no other movement is allowed to enjoy.
This arrangement is not accidental but structural. The Brotherhood is not outside the Jordanian state; it is embedded within it, protected by institutions that are supposed to regulate and restrain it. Jordan follows the same authoritarian model practiced elsewhere in the region: Islamist movements are preserved while secular and nationalist opposition is extinguished, political alternatives are eliminated before they can mature, and radical forces are managed rather than dismantled.
At the same time, fear is exported to the West. The message never changes: support the regime or face the Islamists. Manufactured threat becomes leverage, and leverage becomes protection.
The cost has been staggering. American policy has been misguided. Israeli security has been placed at risk. Ordinary Jordanians remain denied political representation while those who exploit religion for power are shielded.
President Trump did the correct and overdue thing by moving to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt.
Jordan is not peripheral.
Jordan is central.
The Brotherhood is not simply present in Jordan.
It is part of the state.
Until the monarchy is compelled to ban the Brotherhood, dismantle its political arm, close its money networks, and end protection for Islamist leadership, Jordan will remain an authoritarian regime marketed as a Western ally.
Jordan’s crisis is not radical Islam.
Jordan’s crisis is that radical Islam is sheltered by the palace.
And Washington is finally beginning to understand that.
For more about Jordan’s kinglet’s marriage to the Muslim Brotherhood terror group: [americanthinker.com/articles/2022/] [americanthinker.com/articles/2019/] [americanthinker.com/articles/2012/]
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