Biden's Middle East trip: Following in Trump's footsteps
WATCH: Biden looks poised to betray his campaign promise to sideline Saudi Arabia. Does this really serve America's interests?
Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Who's behind push to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terror group?
December 03, 2025
It all happened in a flash.
Two weeks ago, Texas announced that it was designating the Muslim Brotherhood and a prominent American Muslim group as foreign terror organizations. President Donald Trump followed suit last week, ordering his administration to consider sanctioning Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will discuss a bill that goes further yet, requiring the Trump administration to designate all Muslim Brotherhood-related groups as foreign terror organizations.
The sudden movement against the Muslim Brotherhood has left many observers confused. Trump considered designating the group in his first term but ultimately decided against it. At the time, career officials in the State Department and Pentagon were adamant in their assessment that the group didn’t qualify as a terrorist organization. In fact, it barely qualified as a single group. Nearly 100 years after its founding, the loosely organized Islamist political movement had inspired an endless number of different organizations, the vast majority of which have never participated in violence. And those that do advocate violence, like Hamas and Liwa al-Thawra, have already been designated as terror groups by the U.S.
Intelligence agencies have also long opposed efforts to designate the group. In 2017, the CIA said such a move would “fuel extremism” and lead to endless diplomatic headaches given that many political parties in the region are affiliated with the group in one way or another. And a wide range of national security experts say that designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would divert resources away from more serious threats, like al-Qaida or ISIS.
So why, exactly, is this controversial effort suddenly so close to the finish line? An analysis of publicly available information suggests that the credit goes to a pair of influential advocates: hawkish D.C. think tanks and Middle Eastern governments.
Let’s start with the think tanks. One major player here is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization best known for advocating regime change in Iran. FDD Action, the think tank’s lobbying arm, released a “policy alert” last month detailing how the Muslim Brotherhood has “methodically and insidiously supported terrorist organizations” in the Middle East. “Designating the Muslim Brotherhood and its violent affiliates is a first step to addressing the growing threat posed by its radical mandates,” one lobbyist argued, adding that the U.S. should “work in concert with regional governments who have already outlawed” the group.
The release of this report coincided with a more voluminous entry from the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, or ISGAP. In a 265-page-long analysis, ISGAP alleged a decades-long conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the West and undermine its institutions from within. The report relies heavily on a pair of documents that purport to portray the brotherhood’s far-sighted plans for global domination. (Scholars of political Islam argue that the influence of these documents is greatly exaggerated, if they ever had any influence at all.)
FDD and ISGAP have a lot in common. For one, both groups have close ties to Israel. FDD originally described itself in tax filings as seeking to “enhance Israel’s image in North America,” and it continues to host former Israeli military officers as fellows while organizing trips to Israel for U.S. foreign policy hands. ISGAP received much of its funding from Israel until at least 2022.
Both FDD and ISGAP also maintain an intimate working relationship with the United Arab Emirates. Leaked emails from 2017 revealed extended correspondence, and even policy coordination, between the head of FDD and a prominent Emirati diplomat, who also later spoke at an FDD event in 2021. ISGAP, meanwhile, brought an Emirati official to Congress just a few weeks ago.
The UAE and Israel have a shared commitment to fighting the Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE designated the group as a terror organization in 2014 — a move driven in part by its desire to crack down on local opposition during the Arab Spring, in which a Muslim Brotherhood-backed president briefly came to power in Egypt. “The Emiratis are uniquely obsessed with the brotherhood,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. Israel, for its part, has long been skeptical of the organization, in part due to the fact that Hamas emerged as a violent offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.
Israel has made no visible effort to push the current ban, but Israeli officials have welcomed it with open arms. One Israeli minister has even used it to advocate for an Israeli ban on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent American civil rights group. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, used the new designation as an opportunity to call for a complete ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel — a comment that many Arab observers received as a threat to ban prominent Palestinian political parties in the country.
There is reason to believe that the UAE is playing a more direct role in the push. The group has long advocated for Western bans on the Muslim Brotherhood; in 2014, Emirati officials threatened to back out of an arms deal with the United Kingdom unless London moved to crack down on the organization, according to the Guardian. A few weeks ago, the Emirati ambassador to the U.S. joined ISGAP for a “policy workshop” on Capitol Hill, just as ISGAP’s advocacy efforts in favor of a ban were heating up. Then, when Trump’s executive order came out, a prominent adviser to the Emirati president quickly welcomed it as a “strategic, courageous, and historic decision.”
These outside efforts have found a sympathetic ear in the halls of power, particularly as the Trump administration has stretched the definition of terrorism to include groups like drug cartels. One key ally in the White House is Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism. At an FDD event in July, Gorka referred to the brotherhood as the “granddaddy” of all terror groups and thanked FDD for all its efforts to “tell the truth about the brotherhood.” (This assessment will come as news to mainstream terror analysts, who don’t consider the brotherhood to be a terrorist group in the first place.) After Trump’s announcement, Gorka gushed that “history has been made.”
In Congress, the leading advocate for a designation has been Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), the sponsor of the bill that the House will discuss today. Diaz-Balart chairs the Friends of Egypt Caucus, suggesting a close relationship with Egyptian officials, who have long pushed for a brotherhood ban. He also joined FDD’s executive director last week for a discussion about Trump’s executive order, which he lauded as a key first step to fighting a “pernicious and dangerous terrorist group with global reach.”
The difference between Trump and Diaz-Balart’s approaches is consequential. Trump’s order would only designate a few chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the administration accuses of making common cause with terrorists. (Experts largely agree that the Lebanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood has participated in violence, while the evidence against the Jordanian and Egyptian branches is far less clear.) But the congressional version would throw these distinctions out the window, forcing the U.S. to crack down on a seemingly endless list of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups.
The biggest question mark here surrounds the possible role of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a powerful former GOP lawmaker who now works as a lobbyist for the UAE, among other clients. Ros-Lehtinen wrote a lengthy report in 2020 in which she described the Muslim Brotherhood alongside al-Qaida and ISIS as “terrorist and extremist groups.” She also happens to be a close personal friend of both Diaz-Balart, who once called her “a part of my family,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently credited her for helping get him into law school and launch his political career.
Regardless of who is behind the effort, its impact will fall squarely on opposition groups in the Middle East, according to Raed Jarrar of DAWN, a group that pushes for democratic change in the region. “It's a free gift that authoritarian regimes would use to stifle freedom of expression and political organizing in the Middle East and North Africa,” Jarrar said, noting recent efforts to crack down on non-violent Muslim Brotherhood-related political groups in Jordan and Tunisia.
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Top image credit: U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (not pictured) over lunch in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 17, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Doubt is plaguing Trump’s Venezuela game
December 03, 2025
Donald Trump reportedly had a surprise phone conversation with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last week. Days later, the U.S. State Department formally designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization and, furthermore, declared that Maduro is the head of that foreign terrorist organization.
Therefore, since the Cartel de los Soles is “responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States,” the first claim puts war with Venezuela on the agenda, and the second puts a coup against Maduro right there too.
There is just one problem: the Trump administration is having trouble convincing its own agencies and closest international partners of either claim. Nor has the administration convinced them that Venezuela is a “narco-terrorist” state, or that Trump’s solution to the problem — bombing small boats allegedly carrying fentanyl and other drugs into the United States — is legal.
The problem with designating the Cartel de los Soles a terrorist organization is that there is no such thing as the Cartel de los Soles in the way that the Trump administration claims. As The New York Times reports, “Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization” but “a figure of speech.” It is a three-decade-old mocking reference to the sun insignia Venezuelan generals wear and to military officials who were corrupted by drug money.
“There is no such thing as a board meeting of the ‘Cartel de los Soles.’ There is no such animal. The organization doesn’t exist as such,” Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, told The Times.
Moreover, said Jeremy McDermott, the co-founder of InSight Crime, a think tank that focuses on crime and security in Latin America: “The Cartel of the Suns became a catchall phrase for state-embedded drug trafficking, but these are not integrated — the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. It is absolutely not an organization, per se,” he said, adding, “If you are going to go to war, the language matters.”
Moreover, intelligence analysts don’t agree that Maduro is the “head” of any cartel, much less one that doesn’t exist.
A Feb. 26 “sense of the community” memorandum on another Trump terrorist designee, the Tren de Aragua (TDA) crime syndicate, which pulled together the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concluded that TDA “was not acting at the direction of the Maduro administration and that the two are instead hostile to each other.”
Apparently, according the Times, the office of the Director of National Intelligence told a senior intelligence analyst to do a “rethink” of that February analysis and offer a new assessment. The new memo, dated April 7, “confirmed the intelligence community’s original assessment” and continued to contradict the administration’s claim about Maduro, concluding that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
The intelligence community maintained in that memo that it “has not observed the regime directing TDA.” Instead, the memorandum finds that “Venezuelan intelligence, military, and police services view TDA as a security threat and operate against it in ways that make it highly unlikely the two sides would cooperate in a strategic or consistent way.”
The new memo, however, added a more nuanced view of the FBI position which agreed with the assessment but dissented by saying that some elements of the Venezuelan government help facilitate TDA gang members’ migration to the U.S. and use them as proxies to advance the regime’s goals.
Weeks after the second report, Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Maria Langan-Riekhof, his deputy, were fired. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has denied that it had anything to do with the memos and would only say “the Director (Tulsi Gabbard) is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community.” However, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters that “it's clear that Collins got axed for just doing his job.”
The U.S. has had no more success convincing its partners that Venezuela is even a significant source of fentanyl or other drugs coming into the United States.
Current and former U.S. officials say that most of the boats struck by the U.S. military were in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago — a passage used neither to transport fentanyl nor other drugs to the United States. Marijuana dominates with 80% of the drugs that flow through that passage, and most of the rest is cocaine. And those drugs are headed not to the U.S. but to West Africa and Europe.
According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90% of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl. The 2025 UNODC World Drug Report assesses that Venezuela “has consolidated its status as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops” and that “[o]nly 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela.”
To date, there have been at least 20 strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs, and 80 people have been killed without being charged or tried. There are serious internal concerns regarding the legality of those strikes. Hegseth is in hot water this week over whether not he had ordered second lethal strikes on a boat, killing survivors.
On October 16, Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, announced that he was stepping down amid reports of “real policy tensions concerning Venezuela” between the Admiral and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Current and former U.S. officials say that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration has “repeatedly steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers who questioned whether the provocative policy was legal.” Like the military and intelligence officials, many lawyers and officials who were concerned “left government or were reassigned or removed.”
Many of America’s key allies are no more convinced. The U.K has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela because they believe the strikes “violate international law.” The U.K. is one of America’s closest allies and most important intelligence sharing partners. They have many intelligence assets based in the Caribbean.
And the UK is not the only close ally to act on its concern. Canada, which has traditionally helped the U.S. interdict drug traffickers in the Caribbean, has also notified the U.S. that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes. Canada says their intelligence sharing in the region is “separate and distinct” from these strikes and that Canada "has no involvement" in the U.S. strikes on Venezuelan vessels.”
Jean-Noël Barrot, France's foreign affairs minister, has also said that France is concerned because the strikes “violate international law.” And Dutch officials had previously restricted intelligence sharing with the U.S. over concerns that the “politicization of intelligence” could be used in “human rights violations.”
Colombia has also stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. “because we would be collaborating with a crime against humanity.”
If you cannot convince other nations — and your people — of your right to use military force, you may be wrong to use military force. It appears that Trump has a lot more convincing to do.
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Top photo credit: Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna (Face the Nation/CBS/screengrab)
Khanna & Massie tag team against war. And they're friends, too.
December 03, 2025
Republican President Donald Trump ran on an “America First” platform yet now seems on the verge of a U.S.-led regime change war in Venezuela.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie (Ky.) has questions about this.
During the government shutdown last month, Massie asked a practical, very America first question, “How is it that we have money for regime change in Venezuela but not money to pay air traffic controllers in our country?”
It was a good point. Trump, who once vowed to “expel the warmongers” in Washington, prefers to attack Massie on a regular basis. The Kentucky lawmaker is not alone.
Massie appeared in June on CBS News’ Face the Nation with his friend and frequent ally, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna (Calif.). Host Margaret Brennan said to her guests, “I know this is an unlikely pairing. You are on completely different ends of the political spectrum, but you both worked on this war powers resolution to prohibit U.S. forces from engaging in hostilities against Iran without authorization from Congress. [The] president just blew right past that.”
Their resolution failed but their coalition hasn’t in their attempt to check power. In fact, Massie just introduced another war powers bill on Monday with peers across the aisle — Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jaoquin Castro (D-Texas) — to prevent Trump from launching a war on Venezuela.
Massie and Khanna have built something. Massie told Brennan, “I think I represent part of the coalition that elected President Trump. We were tired of endless wars in the Middle East, and tired of wars in Eastern Europe.”
Khanna added, “Thomas is absolutely right, and showing courage… He is, actually, representing a lot of the people in the MAGA base.”
Khanna the Democrat is not MAGA, but has made common cause with Republicans like Massie and others towards antiwar ends, seemingly forming their own, populist left-right coalition. Similar to Khanna, progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also supported the June resolution with Massie.
On foreign policy in general, you won’t find that much daylight between Khanna and Massie.
Both agree that the U.S. should not be funding Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, and each has commented on the moral depravity of that conflict. Massie has opposed giving any U.S. aid to Ukraine (he opposes all foreign aid) throughout the Russia-Ukraine war. Khanna has voted with his party to send U.S. aid to Ukraine, but has taken heat from Democrats for supporting Trump’s various peace proposals. Both opposed U.S. strikes in Yemen. Of course there was the cosponsored resolution to prevent a U.S. attack on Iran.
Their positions here often run counter to the majorities in their respective parties. Bipartisan foreign policy alliances in the past have often meant that the Democratic and Republican establishments have simply agreed to promote, not question, the current or next war. That's why they call it the War Party.
But Democrat Khanna is no Hillary Clinton, and Republican Massie is no John McCain. Khanna’s foreign policy positions align more closely with his party’s progressive wing than they do with centrists like Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Massie’s consistent “America First” non-interventionism is very much in the vein of libertarianism and original MAGA and is the polar opposite of Republican leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.).
The thread that connects these two is an antiwar populism that both Khanna and Massie seem to understand and find value in. In a November 19 story titled, "Rep. Ro Khanna cracks the MAGA coalition over the Epstein files,” NBC News observed, “Khanna has a different vision of bipartisanship than other Democrats, including former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who sought to find the most moderate Republicans and work with them on noncontroversial goals.”
In Washington, opposing wars is almost always controversial.
“By contrast, Khanna tends to look for GOP lawmakers to partner with on populist issues that both the left and the right can sell as a rebuke of an entrenched establishment,” the story noted.
Besides just partnering with Massie, Khanna has "worked with Republicans to advocate for reining in the government’s warrantless surveillance powers under FISA Section 702 and to prevent U.S. military intervention in Yemen."
None of this is lost on the Quincy Institute, which is presenting its annual award to both men Wednesday night, “in recognition of their work to reassert Congress’ constitutional authority over questions of war and peace.” QI is the publisher of Responsible Statecraft.
At a time when much of the Democratic Party’s identity is wrapped up in simply opposing Trump, Khanna has consciously taken a different approach: Focus on the issues at hand, as he did in pairing with Massie to open the Epstein files, and don’t get so hung up on the personalities.
Even if one of those personalities is the president. “Let's spend more time railing against a rigged system than just memeing against Trump,” Khanna shared on X recently.
“I have not gotten into Twitter wars with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. I have a real friendship with Thomas Massie,” Khanna told NBC. “They trusted me enough not to make it about Donald Trump.”
Massie said of his Democratic ally and their cross pollination, “Ro gave me the idea, whether he meant to or not. He’s able to put aside the partisan bomb throwing in order to work across the aisle, and he’s really good on TV.”
This type of pairing isn’t unprecedented. In the George W. Bush and Barack Obama eras, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich were often the most outspoken antiwar duo in Congress, representing the hard right and hard left of their respective parties.
Before the Epstein files vote, Khanna said on the House floor, “The Epstein class is going to go. And the reason they’re gonna go is the progressive left and the MAGA right and everyone in between is finally waking up against this rotten system.”
Endless wars have long been at the heart of that corrupt system.
The concept of an antiwar left-right alliance is not new. But it is good to see it regenerating in the tag teaming of these two lawmakers.keep readingShow less
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