The Iran-Sudan rapprochement: What does it mean for the Red Sea?
Assessing the significance of Sudan's overtures to Iran
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ANALYSIS
Sudan’s military government has fully restored diplomatic ties with Iran, ending an eight-year rupture instigated by Saudi Arabia.
In separate meetings, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military ruler, received the credentials of Iran’s new ambassador, Hassan Shah Hosseini, and dispatched a Sudanese ambassador to Tehran, Abdelaziz Hassan Saleh.
Ahead of the ceremony Sunday, Iranian diplomats and operatives already had rented dozens of apartments in Port Sudan—at a time when Western and Arab states mostly have withdrawn their embassies from the country.
Additionally, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps dispatched several cargo flights to Sudan, allegedly bringing attack drones and other weapons.
These developments coincide with a phase of growing cooperation among Arab regional powers to pressure Sudan’s military government to end the nation’s ongoing civil war though negotiations—an option that the military regime has rejected.
The Arab powers have given little assistance to Sudan’s military government, which is fighting for its survival against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary originating in the country’s western Darfur region.
Based in Port Sudan, Sudan’s military junta has lost control of most of the capital Khartoum, vast parts of western Sudan, and two states in the nation’s agricultural heartland. If it continues to lose territory, it will rule over little more than a rump state along the Red Sea coast and the northern states neighboring Egypt.
So what does Iran stand to gain from normalization of relations with Sudan? What could this mean for the geopolitics of the region and the security of the Red Sea? And could Iranian military assistance change the course of the civil war in Sudan?