Just as Sudan marked a grim milestone, the third anniversary of the war that started in its capital Khartoum, the war in Iran threatened to plunge the broader region, Sudan included, into deeper strife. Now, regardless of how ceasefire talks fare, Sudan is likely to be irrevocably pulled into the Gulf’s orbit.
Sudan’s war is primarily a national and local level war. It is a war of succession fought between two powerful blocs within former dictator Omar Al-Bashir’s military-security state, over who will inherit his repressive rule. The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally known as Hemedti, show little sign that they are interested in their war ending anytime soon. Sudan’s conflict has, in just three years, engendered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, worst hunger crisis, worst displacement crisis, and worst sexual violence crisis, all at once.
Though underpinned by a domestic contestation between armed camps, the war is fundamentally too, a war against civilians; it is they who are made to bear its cost. Death, disease, famine, and displacement haunt a country that only seven years ago celebrated bringing Bashir down after 30 years of repressive Islamist military rule. It is precisely this zeal for civic rule that Bashir’s heirs, Burhan and Hemedti, wish to extinguish and it is precisely here that they find common cause with neighboring Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, who alongside the US make up the Quad, the negotiation formation aiming to secure a ceasefire. Beyond globalizing the counter-revolutionary war however, Sudan fits into the interest of these Arab countries in very different ways: for the Egyptians, Sudan constitutes a national security issue owing to the River Nile and the large border they share, and for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Sudan has gone from a partner in the war in Yemen to an arena of their most acute contestation linked to their diverging growth and transformation agendas.
Though underpinned by a domestic contestation between armed camps, the war is fundamentally too, a war against civilians; it is they who are made to bear its cost
As such, there is almost intractable disagreement on who, among Sudan’s gun-toting class, should rule: the Saudis and the Egyptians largely prefer what they see as state institutions, and favor the SAF—despite degrees of discomfort at the extent to which the force is still ridden with members of Bashir’s Islamist regime—while the United Arab Emirates have been supporting the RSF, a group that describes itself as anti-Islamist despite having been created and empowered by them, over decades. The UAE continues to deny supporting the RSF despite UN reports and journalistic investigations proving otherwise. Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Iran, and Israel are all embroiled in Sudan’s war, to varying degrees, but among these regional “middle powers”, the very consequential Gulf countries are currently caught between American, Israeli, and Iranian tensions.
The unprecedented regional war is just a few months old and much speculation has swirled about whether it will exacerbate or dampen Gulf interest, investment, and interventions in Sudan’s war, and in the rest of the Horn of Africa. But there are already indications that Sudan will feel the regional war’s effects most acutely as well as be drawn further into the Gulf’s orbit as a result of it.
A designation in the midst of the Iran war
On March 16, the US State Department designated Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood under its many guises—the Sudanese Islamist Movement and the jihadi armed group Al-Baraa bin Malik Corps—as a Foreign Terror Organizations (FTO). This move was long-expected after the Trump administration signed an executive order late last year designating the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Lebanese chapters as such. The UAE was among the first countries to welcome the designation and there are speculations that Washington was dangling the threat of a designation as leverage to break SAF’s hardened anti-ceasefire stance. The wording of the designation, however, was very much linked to the Iran war, referencing the Sudanese Islamists’ ties with the Iranian Republican Guard Corps and their training and historic regime support. It was this link that clinched the designation, linking the war in Sudan, and some of the groups most prominently animating it, to the US and Israel’s war with Iran.
Whatever moves were made in Washington, Sudan’s Islamists exposed themselves and their ambitions in a way that put them in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. In addition to ensuring their prominence at every battlefield, Bashir loyalists were recently caught in leaks describing how they aim to engineer a return to power through this war that the Trump administration has vowed to end. But what really put them on the US’ radar were videos of prominent Islamists in SAF uniforms promising to take up arms against the US and Israel, if they deployed ground troops in Iran. It was not clear whether Burhan was unable or unwilling to constrain these Islamists within his camp, but he now faces the difficult choice of either distancing Islamist militias, their capital, and foreign relations that he exploits for battlefield advantage, or earning the ire of Washington and alienating his most influential ally Saudi Arabia, which also supported the designation.
Disruption of weapons supply lines
As well as these political shifts, the Iran war, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could disrupt weapons transfers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the SAF and the RSF, respectively. As the territorial control waxes and wanes during this fighting season, which typically corresponds to the dry season (until late June), the two camps are relying on heavy weaponry needed now and the advanced drones they will increasingly rely on for the rainy season when the earth becomes impassable for tanks and large fighting forces.
Since last year the SAF has been relying on Turco-Egyptian military support to disrupt RSF supply lines through eastern Libya and for aerial support at the front line in Greater Kordofan. Recent reports of Egyptian troops’ battlefield-related deaths in Sudan may also change the calculus for Cairo moving forward. The SAF had been promised a $1.5 billion weapons contract from Pakistan, paid for by the Saudis, as part of the bilateral Pakistan-Saudi defense pact. That has now been put on hold. Meanwhile, the RSF airbridge from the UAE to the RSF via neighboring countries has diversified during the same time period with an eastern supply line through Ethiopia recently revealed. Of the two, the SAF could be more vulnerable to weapons disruptions, as it relies much more on formalized and bulky maritime delivery channels from regional allies through the Red Sea and Port Sudan, supply channels which may be imperilled once again should the Houthis resume attacks on the Red Sea.
Despite the UAE having received by far the lion’s share of Iranian missiles, the UAE’s investments in logistics, supply chains, and transport channels across Sudan’s neighborhood means that the initial weapons disruptions at the start of the war are unlikely to continue as the RSF’s supply lines continue to adapt. SAF, having relied on Iranian weapons in the first two years of the Sudan war, was quietly asked by the Saudis to abandon Iran in exchange for Saudi support. Now, with the suspension of Saudi funds for Pakistani weapons, SAF could be left with a supply gap at a critical period in the dry season. As a result SAF have resorted to purchasing weapons from Iran again, which is unlikely to help SAF’s engagement with Washington.
Economic fallouts of the war
But to truly understand the impact of the Iran war on Sudan, we must look at the economic dimension. Given the geographic proximity of Sudan to the Gulf states and the jobs boom since the 1970s, there has been a large presence of Sudanese diaspora working and living in the Gulf for generations. These Sudanese have been the backbone of global remittances supporting families in Sudan, and disruptions to their work will hurt family incomes back in Sudan. In addition to the generations of Sudanese in the Gulf, those recently displaced by Sudan’s war, who have found safety and livelihoods in the Gulf, are now once again under bombardment and at risk of losing their jobs.
This Iran war is also expensive. African countries, perhaps unsurprisingly especially those with the greatest dependence on the Gulf with war-torn Sudan chief among them, are particularly vulnerable to the price shocks brought about by disruptions to global oil and fertilizer supplies ahead of the planting season this month. Another failed harvest in October and January will further plunge Sudan into famine, as food becomes out of reach of many more. In the meantime, the black market value of the Sudanese pound, which determines the price of food and other goods, has fallen sharply against the dollar since April as the fuel crisis raises the price of consumer goods.
Such price increases, coupled with a collapse in purchasing power will only compound the cataclysmic economic impact of Sudan’s own war
Such price increases, coupled with a collapse in purchasing power will only compound the cataclysmic economic impact of Sudan’s own war thus far, further exacerbated by the current lean season (June to September). A recent UN study shows that the war has already set Sudan back 30 years, economically and developmentally, and that extreme poverty could reach 60 percent of the country if the war lasts another four years. Meanwhile, Sudan’s moribund banking sector may be further hit by over-compliance of foreign banks regarding the Islamists’ terror designation, as they still maintain control over much of Sudan’s financial sector, and potential designation of the RSF. This might push Sudanese capital to, once more, over-rely on Gulf banking systems and cause Sudan to lose even more fiscal sovereignty.
While it remains to be seen whether the billions in financing for reconstruction and investment promised to Sudan by the Saudis and the $500 million in aid money nominally committed by the UAE will evaporate as Gulf economies deal with the fallouts from the Iran war, there will likely still be money for wars. Indeed, despite key UAE ports and supply lines being disrupted, UAE weapons supplies to the RSF have not abated. Meanwhile Saudi weapons deals for SAF have been suspended—perhaps due to the recent FTO designation and residual Saudi mistrust of the SAF’s ability to reign in the extremist Islamists within its camp—but not permanently cancelled. Indeed, despite concerns about ties between SAF and Iran, the Saudis are still investing in economic projects with the SAF. There have also been rumors that recent RSF defections to the SAF camp have been lubricated by Saudi cash. Both Saudi and the UAE are investing in the Red Sea’s Western coastline, even if at differing registers.
Intertwined destinies
The Red Sea basin’s importance for Gulf countries is likely to only deepen, and the political logics that play out Gulf interests on the Persian Gulf will now be intrinsically tied to the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia has used its East-West pipeline to export its oil from its western city of Yanbu and, in so doing, has transported its economic lifeline from the Gulf to the Red Sea. This will likely see the Saudis invest more in their maritime neighbors such as Sudan and Eritrea. Whether Iranian-backed hostilities in the Red Sea arise or not, Saudi Arabia will be careful that its economic survival is not imperilled by the maritime presence of Iranian or Emirati allies, such as the Houthis or the RSF, respectively. The creation of another maritime chokepoint at the Bab el-Mandab Strait could strangle Sudan, twice over.
While we may see a temporary de-escalation in the Gulf with a communal push for a ceasefire with Iran, Sudan’s war is unlikely to see the same efforts from these same Gulf actors
A key security aim shared by the GCC states, to protect themselves against both Iran, especially after the 12-day war and Iran’s attack on Al-Udeid in June 2025, and Israel, after the September 9 Israeli attacks in Doha, not only remains salient but has been re-entrenched by the actions of an unrestrained Israel and an angry and wounded Iran. With less trust in US security guarantees remaining, this has already pushed the GCC to renew closer cooperation on collective security. But while we may see a temporary de-escalation in the Gulf with a communal push for a ceasefire with Iran, Sudan’s war is unlikely to see the same efforts from these same Gulf actors. Increasingly, it looks like the opposite is true: a possible unsatisfying de-escalation regarding Iran will likely continue to feed the Gulf tensions—related to Saudi and Emirati divergence on OPEC+ and their anxieties around the diminishing primacy of the petrodollar—which in turn may play out and entrench conflict in the Horn and chiefly in Sudan. The UAE, having invested far more for far longer in its African supply lines, is unlikely to jettison those investments now when it may need them even more to prop up its economic projections and eventual recovery. The Saudis, who had been playing catch up with the Emiratis’ depth of investment in Africa may now pivot further toward the Horn.
None of this bodes well for the Quad’s ability to secure a ceasefire in Sudan. The Trump administration’s tepid efforts to secure a ceasefire in Sudan notwithstanding, Secretary Marco Rubio testified in front of Congress on June 3 that “divisions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia have truly complicated our ability to bring…[Sudan’s conflict] to an end” and made clear that US sees the war in Sudan as a “proxy war” between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, rather than on its own terms. Such a narrow and paternalistic view of the war in fact complicates its resolution as it may be easier to get agreements between the Sudanese than the Gulf actors.
However the war in Iran ends, as GCC countries battle common external threats as well as ever-deepening internal chasms, the destinies of the Gulf and the Red Sea will become further intertwined. Unstable countries like Sudan, already vulnerable to external predation may become not merely sites for regional competition but the carcass upon which all hopes for more egalitarian Gulf-Horn cooperation will rest.
Kholood Khair is the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a think and do tank founded in Khartoum that works on governance, peace and security, and the economy.