Leaders at the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) are warning that the Trump administration’s sudden move to cut off funding to public broadcasters imperils U.S. efforts to communicate its interests and priorities to the region and to compete with adversaries.

MBN and other publicly funded media outlets on Saturday became the latest targets of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging efforts to cut U.S. government spending and programs. MBN is an independent nonprofit but operates based on government grants. It broadcasts and publishes in Arabic through outlets including Alhurra, Radio Sawa and Elsaha.

Jeffrey Gedmin, the president and CEO of MBN, emphasized to Jewish Insider that the nonprofit competes in the Middle East across with outlets such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky Arabia and other networks unfriendly or outright hostile to the United States and Israel.

“You’re vacating the field to the opponent. You’re leaving the goal free and open. They’re already better-resourced than we are … but that’s OK,” Gedmin said. “We can be sharp, shrewd and asymmetrical, but to quit is a problem for me.”

“An Apache helicopter costs $53 million. I can do this for one-and-a-half helicopters, for God’s sake,” Gedmin added.

Gedmin explained that MBN’s goals and coverage focus on presenting an accurate picture of the United States and its policies and interests, on exposing what U.S. adversaries such as Iran and China are doing in the region and on providing an “honest and open platform” for Israeli officials to explain their policies and Israeli society to the region.

“We don’t do propaganda, but explain [American policy] as it is,” Leila Bazzi, the editor-in-chief of MBN, told JI. “We expose with facts how all the proxies of Iran — wherever they are — they destroy” the countries that they infiltrate. “We counter the radical Islamists and we explain that the jihad is something that’s not the proper interpretation … We defend minorities and we speak about them.”

Bazzi also said that MBN is the only Arab-language outlet that has provided a platform for the families of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas.

Rob Satloff, the executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has for years hosted a weekly show on MBN’s Alhurra channel, told JI, “Unilateral disarmament in the battle of ideas is an odd formula to make America great vis-a-vis our enemies and adversaries, who are overjoyed at the mothballing of America’s international broadcasting.”

Satloff added on X on that he hopes the administration preserves key functions of the network, explaining, “for the [U.S. government] to lose its voice to the likes of [Al Jazeera] and other propaganda platforms would be an own-goal of historic proportions.”

Bazzi emphasized to JI that affiliates and boosters of Iran and its terrorist proxies and the Muslim Brotherhood are gloating and celebrating online in Arabic about the agency’s defunding, using a hashtag referring to its employees as American “pawns.”

Gedmin said that the U.S. government’s signal that it lacks confidence in and support for MBN endangers MBN’s employees in the Middle East, who support America and Israel and oppose Iran and other radical and terroristic entities.

The complete funding cut, Gedmin noted in a memo to employees on Sunday, comes in spite of aggressive cost-cutting and reform efforts that he was hired around a year ago to spearhead. He told JI that, after aggressive bipartisan work on Capitol Hill, he had believed funding for MBN was safe through the end of the fiscal year, but the shutdown memo came just hours after Congress approved the funding.

“I’m shocked because we weren’t prepared for it. We hadn’t been given a heads up. There’s no signaling,” Gedmin said. He said that the agency wants to work with the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) team, currently being spearheaded by former Arizona Senate and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and with lawmakers to reassess the decision, and is looking at legal options to appeal the move.

He added that if appeals are unsuccessful, there are legal pathways for MBN to continue broadcasting if he is able to find private funding to keep the network running.

USAGM did not respond to a request for comment.