Ever since it was announced in late March that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would be coming to Washington April 3 to meet with President Donald Trump and hold a series of meetings with US decision-makers, there has been talk about a number of things on his agenda. Although Sisi and his accompanying delegation will likely discuss many issues during their visit to the US capital, one of the most critical and important issues for Cairo will be attempting to persuade the new administration to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Attempts at getting the US Congress to slap this label on the group during former President Barack Obama’s term were not successful, after bills proposed in both the House and Senate in early 2016 failed to garner enough support. The Senate bill was proposed by former presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas.

Statements from the parliamentary and political delegation accompanying Sisi, whose members arrived in Washington on March 30-31, show that they will be focusing on communicating with congressmen who voted in favor of the aforementioned bills, along with other legislators, in an effort to get congressional support for labeling the Brotherhood a terrorist group.

During this visit, concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood will be a top priority, unlike the past. In the era of former Presidents George W. Bush and Hosni Mubarak, the group was a secondary concern to Cairo when it came to bilateral ties with the United States, and under Obama no real progress was made in this regard.

The Muslim Brotherhood, it turns out, is not standing idly by. The group has been making efforts to confront these attempts since February 2016, when calls for labeling the group took a serious turn domestically in the United States.