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This month, Sudan\u2019s de facto government\u2014led by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)\u2014accused<\/a> Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates of launching drone attacks<\/a> on Sudan and recalled<\/a> its ambassador to Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n The incident underscored the geopolitical proxy struggle ongoing in Sudan after more than three years of civil war. The SAF has, with mounting credibility, accused both Ethiopia<\/a> and the United Arab Emirates<\/a> of backing its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), throughout the war.<\/p>\n The war in Sudan has never commanded much of the world\u2019s attention, despite the efforts of Sudanese journalists, civil society leaders, and humanitarian groups to document<\/a> its horrors. Last October, an RSF massacre at a hospital in El Fasher<\/a>, which the United Nations later found to bear \u201challmarks of genocide<\/a>,\u201d prompted only a few weeks of outrage before the world moved on.<\/p>\n The Iran war has complicated the situation and further diverted attention from Sudan. As the site of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis, Sudan is uniquely vulnerable to regional shocks. The U.N. estimated that more than 33.7 million<\/a> people in the country of nearly 52 million<\/a> now require humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n The overlapping web of actors involved in both conflicts has made the road to peace in Sudan more convoluted and fraught. Although the United States and Iran have a tenuous cease-fire in place, talks to formally end that war have stalled, and the conflict in the Middle East has already produced devastating political, economic, and humanitarian repercussions in Sudan.<\/p>\n In April 2023,<\/span> a power struggle between SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo\u2014more commonly known as Hemeti\u2014led conflict to break out in Sudan\u2019s capital, Khartoum. In the years since, external actors<\/a> have provided arms, funding, and other support to both sides, dragging out the crisis and turning it into a proxy war. The parallel conflict in the Middle East has made this picture more complex.<\/p>\n Sudan was once Iran\u2019s closest ally in Africa, but Khartoum severed ties with Tehran in 2016\u2014out of loyalty to another partner, Saudi Arabia, after Iran executed a Saudi cleric. Sudan and Iran reestablished<\/a> diplomatic ties a few months into the Sudanese civil war, in a move widely seen as an effort to bolster the SAF with Iranian military support. Though SAF leadership has been coy<\/a> about the relationship, early reports indicated that Iran was supplying drones<\/a> to the Sudanese army.<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia remains one of the SAF\u2019s key political and financial backers\u2014an unlikely convergence for longtime rivals Riyadh and Tehran. When the United States and Israel first launched strikes on Iran in February, some SAF allies within Sudan expressed support for the Islamic Republic. But once Iran initiated retaliatory strikes across the region, pressure from Gulf states prompted Burhan to condemn<\/a> the attacks.<\/p>\n Burhan then met separately with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman<\/a> and Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tariq<\/a>, signaling solidarity and an effort to secure support for his own war effort in Sudan\u2014even as reports<\/a> suggested that the crown prince was urging the United States to intensify attacks against Iran. The war in the Middle East has forced Burhan and the SAF to juggle the competing interests of their allies, placing Sudan\u2019s government in a precarious position abroad as it fights its own war at home.<\/p>\n On the other side, Sudan and human rights groups have accused both Russia and the UAE of supplying the RSF with arms, mercenaries, and financial support, whether through direct funding or illicit gold smuggling networks<\/a>. The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group<\/a> had operated in Sudan since 2017, but Moscow declared public support<\/a> for the SAF in 2024, a year after the Africa Corps, which operates directly under the Russian government, formally succeeded Wagner.<\/p>\n This seemed to reflect Russia\u2019s broader goal of securing port access to the Red Sea shipping corridor, which has only increased in importance amid the maritime disruptions caused by the Iran war.<\/p>\n Sudan initiated proceedings<\/a> against the UAE<\/a> before the International Court of Justice in March 2025, accusing the country of being complicit in genocide by supporting the RSF. (The UAE denied these allegations.) The UAE has come under Iranian attack in the Gulf, potentially disrupting flows of funding and support to the RSF. But Le Monde<\/em> reported<\/a> that the UAE is now working with the RSF to develop new supply routes<\/a> for arms transfers<\/a> through Ethiopia and the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n The UAE is also reportedly funding<\/a> and providing military assistance<\/a> to an RSF training base in Ethiopia\u2019s Benishangul-Gumuz region. Other than Egypt and Eritrea, which are aligned with the SAF, every country bordering Sudan has allowed the RSF to \u201coperate in some way on its territory,\u201d The Economist<\/em> noted<\/a>. The most aggressive of these operations have been drone attacks. The SAF\u2019s accusations that Ethiopia and the UAE carried out strikes in May came just ahead of a new U.N. report<\/a> asserting that armed drones are the leading cause of civilian deaths in Sudan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Critically, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are members of the so-called Quad for Sudan\u2014alongside the United States and Egypt\u2014tasked with pursuing a diplomatic end to the civil war. The initiative was flawed<\/a> from the start, as the three Arab states back opposing sides and Washington\u2019s commitment to the peace process is tenuous at best.<\/p>\n This tension was evident when the U.S. State Department designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization in March. The department\u2019s statement highlighted the group\u2019s ties to Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but failed to acknowledge its role in sustaining former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir\u2019s three-decade dictatorship or the Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s long-standing influence in the SAF\u2014suggesting that Washington\u2019s priorities lie in reinforcing its confrontation with Tehran.<\/p>\n The overall lack of political will has brought talks on ending the Sudan war to a performative crawl. The Quad\u2019s most recent negotiation efforts stalled on the coattails of yet another round of failed cease-fire talks<\/a> between the RSF and SAF in February, in which the SAF rejected a U.S. proposal endorsed by the Quad.<\/p>\n Quad members and other parties met for the now-annual International Conference for Sudan in Berlin on the war\u2019s third anniversary in April. The conference secured<\/a> more than $1 billion in humanitarian funding to U.N. operations in Sudan, but actionable measures to end the fighting and hold the warring parties and their supporters accountable were largely absent\u2014as were representatives from the warring sides themselves.<\/p>\n Alternate negotiation channels could prove viable. On May 13, Burhan visited Bahrain<\/a> to discuss Sudan\u2019s war with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as part of Bahraini efforts to facilitate talks between the SAF and the UAE. After the trip, Burhan told the Middle East Eye<\/a><\/em> that he would be willing to open talks with the UAE if it ceased support for the RSF.<\/p>\n But with the Quad preoccupied by negotiations elsewhere in the Middle East\u2014while the UAE continues to insist<\/a> on its neutrality\u2014meaningful engagement seems unlikely.<\/p>\n Beyond the diplomatic circus,<\/span> the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz and resulting price spikes are worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis. The International Rescue Committee estimated<\/a> that Sudan alone accounts for more than 10 percent of global humanitarian need, which is reflected in rising starvation and disease outbreaks in the absence of a functioning state.<\/p>\n The Iran war\u2019s disruptions to supply chains have brought the global humanitarian delivery pipeline to its knees. More than $130,000<\/a> in pharmaceutical supplies bound for Sudan were stranded in Dubai in late March, while lifesaving medical shipments for more than 400,000 children<\/a> were delayed. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the costs for some relief shipments have more than doubled<\/a>.<\/p>\n A U.N. World Food Program official warned<\/a> in March that if disruptions persist through June, 45 million additional people across multiple countries could face acute hunger. In a world without the U.S. Agency for International Development<\/a>, and with aid infrastructure already hollowed out, even minor delivery disruptions put countless lives at risk.<\/p>\n Simply reopening the Strait of Hormuz now won\u2019t fix the crisis. The war in Sudan had already decimated<\/a> agricultural output in what was known as the breadbasket of Africa. In 2024, Sudan imported<\/a> 54 percent of its fertilizer from the Persian Gulf, leaving it highly vulnerable to maritime disruptions.<\/p>\n Global prices of urea, a nitrogen-based fertilizer, surged<\/a> by nearly 99 percent year-to-date in April. The damage is already done: When planting for Sudan\u2019s fall harvest begins in June, farmers are already likely to reap little in return.<\/p>\n As Sudanese voices inside and outside the country continue to push for a resolution to Sudan\u2019s war, attention has never felt further away. But by boosting humanitarian and financial efforts so that affected Sudanese citizens aren\u2019t responsible for absorbing rising costs, the short-term impacts of the war in Iran on aid can be mitigated.<\/p>\n The $1 billion raised in Berlin is a start, but as U.N. official Tom Fletcher noted<\/a> at the conference, more than $2.2 billion is needed this year for U.N. operations in Sudan. This figure doesn\u2019t account for the funding and material needs of civil society groups or neighborhood-run mutual aid initiatives<\/a>, which have been integral to the preservation of Sudanese society during the war.<\/p>\n Negotiators must prevent Sudan from becoming a forever war. Each passing day without a long-term solution reveals an abdication of responsibility by a failing international system. As the war in Iran commands global attention and disrupts aid flows, world leaders must demand diplomatic urgency and accountability to ensure that Sudan is not collateral damage in a larger regional crisis.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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