WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump鈥檚 Middle East policy attracted more controversy Wednesday after reports that the administration is mulling executive orders that would designate both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran鈥檚 Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as foreign terrorist organizations.
Middle East experts who spoke to Arab News pointed to a 鈥渃ompelling case鈥� for adding the IRGC on the terrorist list, but a more thorny one when it comes to the Brotherhood.
Given the particularities of its offshoots and its regional reach, the potential designation of the Brotherhood carries more risks than the IRGC, experts said.
Sources within the Trump administration told Arab News that a broad designation of the Brotherhood across different countries is 鈥渓ess likely鈥�, and the preference would be in targeting ideological, country-based and clerical affiliates of the organization that espouse violence.
Both the New York Times and Reuters reported Wednesday on a debate within the Trump administration over adding the Brotherhood and IRGC as foreign terrorist organizations, similar to Hezbollah, Hamas or Al-Qaeda who sit on a long list of groups that Washington has targeted since 1997.
The Times noted that 鈥渢he Iran part of the plan has strong support within the White House鈥� and that 鈥渕omentum behind the Muslim Brotherhood proposal seems to have slowed in recent days amid objections from career officials at the State Department and the National Security Council.鈥�
These objections, Arab News learned, have halted the designation of the Brotherhood and broadened the circle of consultations on the topic within the administration.
While advisers to the president including Michael Flynn, Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka are keener on designating the Brotherhood, it is the high-ranking officials at the State and Defense departments who are urging more caution in approaching this issue.
Hassan Hassan, a fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Arab News that designating the Brotherhood as a whole 鈥渋s not a good idea but the broad ideology of the organization (is) somewhat implicated in the violent extremism problem.鈥�
The expert and co-author of New York Times bestseller 鈥淚SIS: Inside the Army of Terror鈥� offered the reasons to be alarmed about the Brotherhood. 鈥淐arrying out a suicide bombings, for example, is justified by Islamists even though they affirm peaceful engagement,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he contribution of Islamism to the jihadist ideologies is extremely downplayed and even overlooked by so-called experts.鈥�
Hassan added: 鈥淎nyone with basic knowledge of jihadists will know the depth of revolutionary Islamist contribution to their worldview and ideology.鈥�
Still, and while Hassan highlights the need to recognize and counter the Brotherhood鈥檚 destructive contribution, he recommends a way forward that would target this stream of thought and practice 鈥渨ithout having to deal with the complexity of actually designating them.鈥�
Designating the IRGC on the other hand is gaining more traction in Washington. Perry Cammack, a fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Arab News that there is 鈥渁 stronger and more compelling case for designating the IRGC, because it perpetrates violence and undermines US interests in the region.鈥� Cammack, who worked previously at the Congress and State Department, questioned the impact of such a designation.
鈥淲e have had sanctions against Iran for decades now, and the IRGC has only become bolder and more entrenched regionally,鈥� Cammack said. The former US official sees 鈥渁 positive short term benefit coming from the IRGC designation鈥� but not necessarily a game changer in the chess match between Iran and the US.
Both Hassan and Cammack see a larger benefit in isolating the offshoots of the Brotherhood and designating each or wings within each of them, on a case-by-case basis. Ennahda in Tunisia is starkly different from Hamas or the Brotherhood in Syria or Egypt, said Cammack.
Hassan called for 鈥渓abeling the dangerous ingredients of the movement鈥� or clerics aligned with it such as 鈥淵oussef Al-Qaradawi who (has said) it is okay to blow yourself up.鈥� This issue could come up during CIA director Michael Pompeo鈥檚 visit to Turkey, which starts today.
In the aftermath of Trump鈥檚 controversial executive order issuing a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries, it is expected that the administration will pursue its deliberations more carefully on designating the IRGC or the Brotherhood. The process could take weeks entailing a State Department review before an authorization or rejection by the president himself.