Shortly after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a 2011 revolt, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the GOP nominee for vice president, downplayed uncertainties over the Muslim Brotherhood, which had long been banned by Egypt’s government, amid the Islamist movement’s emergence as a dominant political force.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is powerful and organized, but it is neither the dominating force in modern Egypt nor the radical organization that Westerners fear,” Vance wrote in a February 2011 blog post, the contents of which have not previously been reported. “The Muslim Brotherhood may have produced al-Qaeda’s intellectual leader, but it has decidedly moved on.”

The group’s “moderate rhetoric and embrace of the leftist elements in the Egyptian protest movement show us that,” he argued in the essay.

His sanguine comments run contrary to former President Donald Trump’s own assessment of the group, whose numerous international offshoots include Hamas. In 2019, his administration pushed to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The effort arose from a White House meeting at the time with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who had urged Trump to follow Egypt in labeling the group a terrorist organization. Since he claimed power in a 2013 military coup that overthrew the Brotherhood, Sisi, a former general, has cracked down on the opposition movement, which had dominated parliament in the first free elections after Mubarak stepped down.

Before it was dissolved by an Egyptian court more than a decade ago, the Brotherhood had threatened to review Egypt’s long-standing peace treaty with Israel. The movement, which was founded in Egypt in 1928, has recently emerged as an estimable force in Jordan’s parliament, as Islamists have channeled growing discontent over Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

Representatives for Vance did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.

In his essay, written for a blog affiliated with the nonpartisan Center for World Conflict and Peace, Vance, now 40, voiced skepticism that the Muslim Brotherhood would rise to power following the Arab Spring revolt that removed Mubarak from office. He said he was “even less worried about the Egyptian military, expressing “doubt” that “the generals plan to follow in Mubarak’s footsteps.”

“The hope moving forward,” Vance wrote, “is that Egypt continues the economic liberalization of the past decade while transitioning to a more modern, freer society.”

He said he was “oddly optimistic” about Egypt’s future. “Egypt’s revolutionaries are remarkably grounded; they’ve lashed out at Mubarak while respecting their nation’s history, institutions and culture,” he wrote. “They could have made this about the West, or Israel, but they didn’t. They made it about their freedom and the president who took it from them.”

As a senator since 2023 and now as a candidate for vice president, Vance has been a staunch supporter of Israel and an aggressive critic of Iran, while pledging to expand the Abraham Accords to such Arab countries as Saudi Arabia, which in 2014 designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

In the blog post, Vance also speculated about the reason that Egypt’s revolution had succeeded even as the Arab Spring had not spread to monarchies like Saudi Arabia. “The fundamental problem with Egypt is economic, though, and democracy doesn’t grow the economy,” he mused. “Mubarak may have been repressive, but the same can be said of Saudi Arabia’s king.”

“The difference between the two regimes is the material wealth of their populations — especially the youth,” he suggested. “That difference is what made revolution possible in Cairo, but out of the question in Mecca.”

The essay is among a handful of posts that Vance wrote for a blog run by a former professor at Ohio State University, where the junior senator earned his undergraduate degree, as CNN first reported on Tuesday. 

But while the two other blog posts are focused on domestic politics, the essay on Egypt’s revolution provides rare insight into Vance’s earlier views on foreign policy as he has sought to push the GOP in a more isolationist direction while in office.