This is John Batchel, a conversation with Merriam Waba of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about the Muslim Brotherhood,

both condemning the United States and Israel for their attacks on Iran and Lebanon,

and condemning Iran for their attacks on the Arab brethren of the Middle East.

This is a hedging strategy, and Maryamette explains it very carefully here. The Muslim Brotherhood working through an organization

called International Union of Muslim Scholars, I-U-M-S, headquartered in some fashion out of

Doha, though there's no Muslim Brotherhood member to be seen momentarily.

Mariam explains, very carefully, condemning both sides is unusual for the Muslim Brotherhood.

More of this tonight.

Look, it's a little complicated, but our best attempt to understand where the IUMS stands on this is it's kind of straddling a couple of different factors.

First and foremost, the Brotherhood's interest is winning over the hearts of mine and minds across the Middle East.

We've seen it obviously be exiled from Egypt

and places like Jordan, where it was recently just banned as an organization and has to have

cover and exile in places like Doha and Ankara. But what is interesting about the Iranian condemnation,

apart from the fact that it is clearly an attempt to

win over the hearts and minds of the Arab countries as they're under attack by Iran is the

Muslim Brotherhood has a complicated relationship with Iran. We know that the Sunni and Shiite flavors

of Islamism is a little different. The Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist ideology and

Ayatollah's Islamist ideology share similar goals, but they arrive from different places. Yet the

Brotherhood did not shy away from condemning Iran's attacks on the Arab and Gulf states. And I think

that is quite notable because it tells us where

the Brotherhood sees its strengths and weaknesses. It's not going to run to aid Iran or provide any

ideological cover for Iran at the moment because it sees the center of power, or rather the

...