The Kingdom of Jordan last Wednesday banned the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscated its assets, significantly curtailing the influence of Turkey and other Hamas allies in Israel’s eastern neighbor. The pro-American Arab nation dropped the hammer on the Muslim Brotherhood as Turkey aggressively expands its influence throughout the region.

The kingdom banned all operations of the Muslim Brotherhood, confiscated its assets, and prohibited anyone from promoting the group’s Islamist ideology, Jordanian Interior Minister Mazen Fraya announced Wednesday. “Members of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood … are operating in the shadows and engage in activities that could undermine stability and security,” he warned.

On April 15, Jordan arrested 16 Muslim Brotherhood operatives engaged in a yearslong sabotage plot against the kingdom. It subsequently discovered “explosives and weapons transported between Jordanian cities and stored in residential areas,” as well as covert missile manufacturing facilities and “training and recruitment operations,” Fraya explained, leading to the ban.

Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood a decade before, due to a different plot, but it officially licensed Islamic Action Front, a splinter group of the international Muslim Brotherhood organization, to continue limited activities in the country.

But now the Islamist group is stirring up trouble again, perhaps at the behest of Turkish President Recep Erdogan. Erdogan has maintained friendly relations with the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1970s, and since he came to power he has often provided safe harbor for Muslim Brotherhood figures fleeing from other Arab governments.

“As he’s consolidated power, his true ideology has come through,” said American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Michael Rubin on “Washington Watch” last week. “He’s a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte through and through. And in that regard, he really wants nothing more than the defeat of the United States, the defeat of Europe, and the eradication of Israel.”

In response to Jordan’s ban, a Muslim Brotherhood branch based in Egypt, called the Change Movement, urged Jordanian adherents to “revise their strategy and confront the Arab regimes” it claimed were guilty of “neglecting support for the Palestinian cause and aligning with Israel.” This comment succinctly demonstrates where the Muslim Brotherhood’s allegiances lie in the current Middle Eastern conflict: pro-terrorist and anti-Israel.

These nefarious allegiances are shared by Turkey’s Erdogan. Members of the Hamas politburo are reportedly sheltering in Turkey, after their previous host, Qatar, recently expelled them. “No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them,” Erdogan declared. Rubin noted that “many of the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, both before and after October 7th, 2023, were actually planned or financed from Istanbul, Turkey.”

The irony is that Turkey has benefitted greatly from Israel’s victories over Iran’s network of terrorist proxies. “Geopolitically, Erdogan sees Turkey as a rising power in the region,” said Regent University professor A.J. Nolte. “He’s trying to position himself as a Sunni alternative to the Iranian Islamists.” Nature abhors a vacuum, and Turkey is actively extending its reach over areas left vulnerable by Iran’s collapse.

Erdogan’s ultimate ambition is to “reestablish the Ottoman Empire,” Rubin related, from the Middle East to the Balkans to North Africa.

As an early step on this road to imperial glory, Turkey backed the Islamist rebels in Syria who toppled the Assad regime late last year. Weakened by years of civil war and sanctions, the unpopular Assad clung to power largely through the aid of his allies, Iran (Persia) and Russia, two historic adversaries of the Ottoman Empire. Assad especially relied on Iran’s well-equipped proxy Hezbollah, headquartered just across the border in Lebanon.

But Assad’s close allies were bogged down with problems of their own — Russia with its invasion of Ukraine, and Iran with its struggle against Israel. After Israel practically annihilated Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities last spring, Assad’s position was so weak that his entire government crumbled in a weekend. Turkey backed the winning horse in Syria, which made it the big winner from Assad’s abdication.

Turkey already has quite a track record for persecuting ethnic and Christian minorities. It still has yet to acknowledge its responsibility for the Armenian genocide. It continues to treat Christian refugees in Turkey poorly. And it threatens the Kurdish government in northeastern Syria, which provides greater stability and religious freedom then most of the neighboring regions.

Turkey’s southward thrust in Syria also increases the danger to Israel. Since Erdogan is willing to publicly embrace Israel’s terrorist foes, it seems likely that he is also willing to privately support their terrorist plots. And Turkey only seeks to further expand its Islamist influence throughout the region at the expense of Iran.

Yet it seems that Israel is not the only country worried about Turkey’s expanding influence. Jordan’s recent ban on the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrates that they, too, are alarmed by the hostile actions of Islamist groups, which they know are increasingly aligned with Turkey.

This presents an opportunity for the U.S. to lead a coalition of Middle Eastern countries — Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, etc. These countries simply want peace and security in the region, free from the destabilizing, Islamist influence of either Iran or Turkey. The presence of so many allies means that, if the U.S. plays its cards right, we can achieve great geopolitical value with a relatively small commitment of American resources — simply by relying on and supporting our partners in the region.

If America turns its back on our Middle Eastern partners now, we’ll have fewer partners to help us deal with an emboldened, expansionist Turkey later.