Washington has designated four Brotherhood chapters since January and none since March
State called the January designations “the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained” campaign. One chapter has followed, in March. The pace, not the rhetoric, is now the measure.
Executive Order 14362, signed on 24 November 2025, initiated a process rather than imposing designations. On 13 January 2026 the State Department designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist and its leader Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh as an SDGT; the Treasury concurrently designated the Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as SDGTs for providing material support to Hamas. State’s own framing described these as “a first step” and “the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained” campaign, and was confirmed on the wires by France 24 the same day. On 9 March the Sudanese chapter followed. That is four national chapters in the first nine months of 2026, and none since the spring. Two designation bills — S.2293 and H.R.3883, both of 2025 — remain on the congressional docket; their current status is unrefreshed here.
The one action since March ran through finance rather than designation of a chapter. On 23 July OFAC designated Mahmoud al-Abyari, a UK-based senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official, along with three further individuals and three entities, for material support to Hamas under Executive Order 13224. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reading the action a day later, identifies al-Abyari as secretary general of the Brotherhood’s General Secretariat and editor-in-chief of its weekly Risalat al-Ikhwan, and notes the designation cites fundraising through Filistin Vakfi and Hayat Yolu, both previously sanctioned. Separately, at state level, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has designated the Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organisations under state authority, barring them from acquiring land; the release we retrieved carries no date, and the litigation that followed is unverified here.
Assessment: The interesting fact about the American track this week is that there was nothing on it, and that the last chapter designation was six months ago. Read the July OFAC action against a London-based official alongside Vienna’s draft and the shape becomes clearer: the centre of gravity has moved from designating chapters in the Arab world to squeezing Brotherhood-linked finance and association in Europe. That is where the two stories on this desk meet. Britain, where al-Abyari sits, has produced nothing — the most conspicuous gap on the board. One caution on the tally: designating Egyptian and Jordanian chapters as SDGTs for supporting Hamas is a narrower legal claim than an FTO listing, and the two should not be reported as the same instrument.