This month, Sudan’s central government—led by the Sudanese Army (SAF)—the suspect Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates launch drone attacks on Sudan and he remembered his ambassador in Addis Ababa.
The event underscored the ongoing geo-proxy struggle in Sudan after more than three years of civil war. SAF, with great honesty, has accused both of them Ethiopia and United Arab Emirates of supporting its military rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), throughout the war.
The war in Sudan has never attracted much international attention, despite the efforts of Sudanese journalists, civil society leaders and humanitarian groups. document his evils. Last October, the RSF massacre in a hospital The Fasherwhich the United Nations later found to have “symbols of genocide,” fueled outrage just weeks before the world moved on.
The war with Iran has made the situation difficult and diverted more attention from Sudan. As the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Sudan is uniquely vulnerable to regional disasters. The UN estimated that more than 33.7 million people in a nearby country 52 million now they need humanitarian help.
The intertwining network of actors involved in both conflicts has made the path to peace in Sudan complex and controversial. Although the United States and Iran have an ongoing ceasefire, talks to formally end the war have stalled, and the Middle East conflict has already had a devastating political, economic and humanitarian impact on Sudan.
In April 2023, A power struggle between SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – better known as Hemeti – led to a conflict in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. In the years since, external actors they have provided arms, funding, and other assistance to both sides, deescalating the conflict and turning it into a proxy war. A parallel conflict in the Middle East has made this picture even more complicated.
Sudan was once Iran’s closest ally in Africa, but Khartoum severed ties with Tehran in 2016 – out of loyalty to another ally, Saudi Arabia, after Iran killed a Saudi preacher. Sudan and Iran has been restarted diplomatic relations a few months after Sudan’s civil war, in a move seen by many as an effort to bolster the SAF with Iran’s military support. Although the SAF leadership has been coy regarding the relationship, early reports indicated that Iran was supplying drones for the Sudanese army.
Saudi Arabia remains one of the SAF’s main political and financial backers – an unlikely combination for long-time rivals Riyadh and Tehran. When the United States and Israel launched attacks against Iran in February, some of the SAF’s allies in Sudan expressed support for the Islamic Republic. But once Iran launched retaliatory strikes across the region, pressure from the Gulf states pushed Burhan to do so. to curse attack.
Burhan then met separately with the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Sultan of Oman Haitham bin Tariqsignaling solidarity and efforts to gain support for his war effort in Sudan—even if report he pointed out that the prince was asking the United States to increase its attacks against Iran. The war in the Middle East has forced Burhan and the SAF to intervene in the competing interests of their allies, putting the Sudanese government in a bad position abroad while it fights its own war at home.
On the other hand, Sudan and human rights organizations have accused Russia and the UAE of providing the RSF with weapons, mercenaries and financial support, whether through direct or illegal funding. gold smuggling networks. Russian army soldier The Wagner group has been operating in Sudan since 2017, but Moscow announced public support to the SAF in 2024, a year after the Africa Corps, which operates directly under the Russian government, officially succeeds Wagner.
This appeared to reflect Russia’s broader goal of gaining port access to the Red Sea shipping lane, which has only grown in importance amid the maritime disruption caused by the Iran war.
Sudan instituted proceedings against UAE before the International Court of Justice in March 2025, accusing the country of complicity in genocide by supporting the RSF. (The UAE has denied these claims.) The UAE has been subject to Iranian attacks in the Gulf, disrupting the flow of funding and support to the RSF. But The world information that the UAE is now working with RSF to develop new distribution channels for arms transfer through Ethiopia and the Central African Republic.
UAE is also reported funding and give military support to the RSF training center in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. Apart from Egypt and Eritrea, which are affiliated with the SAF, every country bordering Sudan has allowed the RSF to “operate in some way in its territory,” Economist he noted. The most extreme of these operations are drone strikes. The SAF’s accusations that Ethiopia and the UAE went on strike in May came just before the start of a new strike. United Nations report stressing that armed drones are the main cause of civilian deaths in Sudan.
Basically, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are members of the so-called Quad for Sudan—along with the United States and Egypt—tasked with ending the civil war diplomatically. The plan was defect From the start, with the three Arab nations pushing back against opposing sides, Washington’s commitment to the peace process has been difficult at best.
This tension became apparent when the US State Department designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization in March. The department’s statement highlighted the group’s ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but failed to acknowledge its role in maintaining the three-decade dictatorship of former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir or the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-standing influence in the SAF—suggesting that Washington’s priorities lie in strengthening its opposition.
A general lack of political will has brought negotiations on ending the Sudanese war to an effective crawl. The most recent attempt at Quad talks stalled in the second round of another failed round ceasefire talks between the RSF and the SAF in February, where the SAF rejected the US proposal endorsed by the Quad.
Members of the Quad and other parties met for the annual International Conference on Sudan in Berlin on the third anniversary of the war in April. The meeting safe more than 1 billion dollars in humanitarian funding for the United Nations operations in Sudan, but the measures that could be taken to stop the fighting and to hold the warring parties and their supporters accountable were not there – as were the representatives from the warring parties themselves.
Alternative methods of negotiation may prove useful. On May 13, Burhan visited Bahrain to discuss the Sudanese war with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as part of Bahrain’s efforts to facilitate dialogue between the SAF and the UAE. After the journey, Burhan told them Eye of the Middle East that he would be willing to open negotiations with the UAE if it stopped supporting the RSF.
But for the Quad to be preoccupied with negotiations elsewhere in the Middle East—while the UAE continues. emphasize on neutrality—meaningful engagement seems impossible.
Beyond the diplomatic circus, The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and resulting price hikes are exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis. International Rescue Committee estimated that Sudan alone accounts for more than 10 percent of the world’s humanitarian needs, which is reflected in increased hunger and disease outbreaks in the absence of a functioning state.
Iran’s war-torn supply chains have brought the international humanitarian pipeline to its knees. More than $130,000 in medicine products bound for Sudan were stuck in Dubai at the end of March, with the medical shipment saving the lives of more than 400,000 children they were late. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the cost of transporting some aid has been high more than twice.
United Nations Food Program Officer he warned in March that if disruptions continue into June, an additional 45 million people in many countries could face severe hunger. In a world without United States Agency for International Developmentand with the aid infrastructure already closed, even the slightest interruption in delivery puts the lives of many people at risk.
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz now will not fix the problem. The war in Sudan was already over has decreased agricultural products in what was known as the bread basket of Africa. In 2024, Sudan ordered 54 percent of its fertilizer comes from the Persian Gulf, leaving it at high risk of ocean erosion.
The international price of urea, a nitrogen-based fertilizer, it increased by nearly 99 percent year to date in April. The damage is already done: When planting for Sudan’s harvest begins in June, farmers are already likely to harvest less.
While the voices of Sudanese inside and outside the country continue to push for a solution to the Sudanese war, attention has never looked further. But by increasing humanitarian and financial efforts so that affected Sudanese citizens are not responsible for the increased costs, the short-term impact of the Iran war on aid can be reduced.
The $1 billion found in Berlin is a start, but as UN official Tom Fletcher he noted in the meeting, more than 2.2 billion dollars are needed this year for the United Nations operations in Sudan. This figure does not take into account the funding and material needs of civil society organizations or neighborhood-driven mutual aid programswhich have been important in preserving the Sudanese society during the war.
Mediators must prevent Sudan from becoming an eternal war. Every day that passes without a long-term solution reflects the hijacking of accountability by a failing international system. With the war in Iran drawing international attention and disrupting the flow of aid, world leaders must demand diplomatic urgency and accountability to ensure that Sudan does not become collateral damage in the region’s largest crisis.
