BEIRUT - Syrians on both sides of the conflict are waiting to see whether US President Donald Trump will designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organisation,” something he has been toying with for more than two years.

Authorities in Damascus would undoubtedly welcome the Trump decision but remain silent, unable to praise the US president after his decision on the Golan Heights. So is the Syrian opposition but for different reasons.

The Brotherhood is strongly represented on the Turkey-backed Syrian National Coalition, which is positioned to take part in the forthcoming constitutional committee within the context of the UN-mandated Geneva peace process.

If the Brotherhood is sanctioned, it becomes technically difficult for any US official to meet with the Syrian opposition, unless Brotherhood members are expelled. If they are asked to leave the Syrian coalition, that would upset their financial backers in Turkey and Qatar, costing them money that they are eager to receive.

If the Brotherhood is squeezed out of the Geneva process, its members could try to disrupt it.

Throughout the past eight years, the Brotherhood has been the most well-organised and coherent political group in the Syrian opposition, with a clear vision, hierarchy and programme. Few politicians can afford a confrontation with the Brotherhood on one front and with the regime on another.

Although media focus is on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib, the province is historically a hotbed for the Syrian Brotherhood. This is where the group nourished in the 1960s and 1970s, creating underground cells that outlived the Brotherhood’s 1982 exodus from Syria.

The older generation of Idlib notables is strongly affiliated with the Brotherhood and so are their children and grandchildren, who are carrying arms with HTS or the Islamic State (ISIS) now, for lack of better alternative. With ease, the Brotherhood could make a visible comeback in Idlib, carrying arms to combat HTS, with full backing from Turkey.

A second option is to cuddle up to the Russians, who neither sanction the Brotherhood nor consider it a terrorist organisation. It agreed to join the Sochi conference of January 2018 and has been supportive of the Russian-Turkish-Iranian-led talks at Astana.

This would play out nicely for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who enjoys an excellent working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has long wanted to usher the Brotherhood into the political process — more so today than ever, after losing his allies in Egypt and Sudan, and being on the verge of losing them in Libya as well.

It can then be slowly injected into the Russian-led, US-abandoned political process, perhaps after giving it a facelift, with a new name and a new identity. That would require the cooperation of Damascus and amending of its 2011 political party law, which prohibits any party from operating within the Syrian framework, if carrying a religious agenda.

The Syrian government sees zero reason to accommodate the Brotherhood, unable to forget or forgive its attempts at seizing power in the 1960s and in 1982. Extensive Russian lobbying is needed but there are limits as to how far the Russian can talk the Syrians into accepting the Brotherhood, which, by Syrian law, is considered a terrorist organisation. Any contact or membership is a capital offence in the Syrian legal system.

When Erdogan tried to push for the Muslim Brotherhood’s empowerment in 2011, during the final stages of his honeymoon with the Syrians, he got a very cold shoulder in Damascus. Interestingly, the Russians don’t mind dealing with the Brotherhood, nor do the Iranians, who have condemned the Trump decision — much to the displeasure of their allies in Damascus.

A third option would be for the Americans to continue dealing with the Brotherhood members as individuals, not as part of an outlawed organisation, like they did with the Palestine Liberation Organisation at the start of the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. This is something Erdogan might try to peddle to Trump, to keep his proxies on the Syrian constitutional committee, when they meet in July.

One month after being inaugurated, Trump raised the issue of sanctioning the Muslim Brotherhood and former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the group was affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Some members of the Syrian Brotherhood were, indeed, affiliated with al-Qaeda. Fleeing persecution at home, after failing to seize power in 1982, many headed to Pakistan and later to Afghanistan, where they were recruited by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian founder of al-Qaeda. They reported to him until his 1989 assassination, then to Osama bin Laden and to current chief Ayman Zawahiri.

After 9/11, Damascus sent piles of intelligence that the Syrians had gathered over the years about Brotherhood members who joined al-Qaeda, which were put at the disposal of the FBI.

One of them, Abou Khaled al-Souri, was a main commander in the Syrian battlefield, until he was assassinated by ISIS in 2014. Another, Abu Musaab al-Souri — the spiritual godfather of HTS (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) — was arrested in Pakistan in 2005 and extradited to Syria, where he remains in custody.