Sudanese political analyst, DAWN fellow, and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a "think-and-do" tank founded in Khartoum.
"There is a place on earth called Sudan," U.S. President Donald Trump announced at a November 2025 Saudi Investment Forum meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS). Following the proclamation, he added: "His Majesty has asked me to do something." Trump appeared unaware both of royal protocol and his administration's efforts to reach a deal on Sudan for many months—reflecting a concerning reality for the country.
Nearly a year and a half before the war reached the Sudanese capital of Khartoum in 2023, Washington formed the Quad—a group of four nations including Egypt (which replaced the United Kingdom in June 2025), Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—to secure a post-coup deal in Sudan. Their task today is to negotiate a humanitarian truce and subsequent political agreement toward civilian rule. It is a tall order, not least because each member of the Quad, perhaps excluding Washington, is deeply invested in Sudan's war.
Egypt and the UAE have directly engaged militarily in Sudan, serving as the largest military and political backers of the conflict's primary sides: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, initially sought to position itself as a neutral broker, spearheading 2023 talks in Jeddah early in the conflict, but has pivoted to a more overt pro-SAF position. It now has the potential to surpass Cairo's role on the political side of the conflict.
Sudan has become a political football between key U.S. partners in the Middle East, with Washington now playing referee.
- Kholood Khair
The war erupted in April 2023 over irreconcilable differences between the SAF and RSF regarding security sector reform, alongside disagreements over consolidating their joint-2021 coup. The war is also rooted in longstanding grievances and unresolved local conflict dynamics following decades of war. But the moment MBS invoked Sudan with Trump, U.S. involvement catapulted the conflict into an entirely new orbit—one having little to do with Sudan itself.
Sudan has become a political football between key U.S. partners in the Middle East, with Washington now playing referee. Previous U.S. engagement with them produced few results and were similarly disconnected from Sudan. Instead, they focused on weakening the Muslim Brotherhood, limiting the entrenchment of extremist groups on the Red Sea coast and countering immediate Iranian and Russian military ambitions.
The Jeddah talks quickly shifted from a platform intended to secure a ceasefire between the SAF and RSF to a vehicle for an acceptable mutual project between the United States and Saudi Arabia that was less contentious for the Saudis than normalization with Israel. Notably, since Washington granted Riyadh an apparent temporary reprieve from normalization, the Saudis have not held another session under the Jeddah format.
Conversely, Israel remains a significant and increasingly active player in the UAE-U.S. relationship. Following the most intense U.S. public criticism yet of the UAE-backed RSF after its late-2025 massacres in El Fasher, UAE Foreign Minister Abdalla bin Zayed supposedly reminded U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Washington had other regional interests that surpassed all else: Israel.
The UAE was not merely a signatory to the 2020 Abraham Accords, but a chief architect. For Abu Dhabi, positioning itself as Israel's biggest ally in an otherwise hostile region could borrow—even if temporarily—Israel's near-immunity from Western scrutiny, particularly in Washington. That gamble appears to have paid off.
Still, during the Biden administration, mounting evidence of the UAE's support to the RSF—including in atrocities that the administration belatedly deemed a genocide in its final days—failed to meaningfully dent Abu Dhabi's standing in Washington. To be sure, American lawmakers pushed both Biden and Trump to limit U.S. arms sales to the UAE amid concerns that they would reach the RSF. However, Trump overpowered these efforts in summer 2025, seeing the sales through.
Gulf countries' quick adaptation to Trump's foreign policy approach—closely mirroring their own pay-to-play system, backed by vast financial resources—has fostered good standing with this administration. During Trump's May 2025 Gulf trip, Qatar gifted a $400 million jet; Saudi Arabia pledged an initial $600 billion in investments; and the UAE recommitted to $1.4 trillion in investments. In return, Trump granted these countries unparalleled and unchecked power in their spheres of influence—particularly in the Horn of Africa and Yemen.
No ally, however, wields power as unchecked as Israel. Even after Israel's pre-emptive strikes on Iran unsettled the Gulf, followed by Israel's bombing of Doha on Sept. 12—effectively shattering decades of U.S. security guarantees in a single day—these middle powers remained firmly attached to Washington's sphere of influence. Structural realities inform this dependence. While they project significant power across areas they view as constituting their strategic depth—chiefly the Levant and Horn of Africa—they are wealthy states with comparatively weak militaries. The region's strongest and battle-hardened militaries are not in the Gulf but across the Red Sea in Egypt and Ethiopia and, at one point, Sudan.
Despite efforts to cultivate domestic constituencies and manufacture consent to continue fighting, the SAF and RSF increasingly rely on security and financial guarantees from their Arab patrons.
- Kholood Khair
For this reason, in the mid-2010s the then-Saudi-Emirati coalition in Yemen recruited the SAF and RSF to fight the Houthis. Those campaigns solidified the relationship between Emirati leadership and RSF chief Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, more commonly known as Hemedti. Today in Yemen, Saudi Arabia's support to a fragmented but recognized government allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and the UAE's support to revisionist pseudo-nonstate actors mirrors the dynamic in Sudan. With the recent escalation, Sudan joins Yemen as a cautionary tale of the fate that befalls countries whose internal instability invites predatory Gulf intervention.
These neo-colonial Arab ventures relegate Sudanese actors to tertiary figures and bystanders. This dynamic will persist as long as the U.S. approach to Sudan centralizes Arab solutions to African problems. In an administration that has hollowed out most of its foreign policy capacity—delegating decision-making to presidential envoys rather than empowering the State Department and National Security Council—policy options are limited and strategic space is constrained.
In lieu of a well-articulated Sudan strategy, U.S. lawmakers have responded to atrocities such as ethnic cleansing, aid denial, the use of chemical weapons and a litany of other war crimes committed by Sudan's two main belligerents through terrorism designations. The U.S. Congress introduced amendments to designate the RSF as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in August 2025. Trump also signed a November 2025 executive order (EO14362) designating the Muslim Brotherhood—the Sudanese arm of which has been the main political group animating the SAF for over four decades. The stage has been set for future legislation that could include the Sudanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, in its various guises.
Though these designations may be satisfying, none necessarily promote greater acquiescence by the Sudanese sides in ongoing talks. Nor would such designations improve the unprecedented humanitarian situation—the world's largest humanitarian, hunger, displacement and protection crisis. In fact, the opposite could be true. Furthermore, designating either belligerent will transform Sudan further from a diplomatic to a security file, diminishing prospects for a civilian dispensation post-war.
Both sides in Sudan's war—alongside their foreign backers—want the other designated as an FTO to legitimize their war efforts. Doing so frames their desires as counterterrorism, rather than a war over Sudan's resources, simultaneously easing pressure to negotiate with "terrorists." That approach conveniently mirrors Washington's maxim.
Despite efforts to cultivate domestic constituencies and manufacture consent to continue fighting, the SAF and RSF increasingly rely on security and financial guarantees from their Arab patrons. Ironically, after spending over a year accusing the UAE of supporting the RSF—a claim backed by the United Nations— the SAF has now rendered itself as a client of Saudi Arabia by asking for MBS's intervention with Trump.
Thus, the Sudanese parties may have inadvertently cornered themselves by over-relying on Arab allies to secure their future—one that may fall out of Sudanese hands altogether. As recent U.S. "peace" deals elsewhere reflect, partitions and zones of influence under indeterminate foreign control embody the new normal. In other words, cemented foreign interests—not scaffolded domestic solutions—could define Sudan's future. Driven by the interests of autocratic Arab states, negotiations remain far from building a Sudanese-led, civilian negotiating table to negotiate a future free from endless cycles of militarized violence.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
