Iran is stepping up shipments of attack drones to the Sudanese military, further internationalizing the North African country’s civil war and potentially providing Tehran with a new ally through which to project power into the Red Sea, U.S. and Arab officials tell Semafor.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has been locked in a nearly year-long conflict with the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that has split the country and spilled into neighboring countries like Chad and South Sudan. The war provided Iran with an opening last October to reestablish diplomatic relations with the Khartoum government for the first time since 2016 and potentially end Sudan’s strategic shift towards the West.
The country, previously designated by the U.S. as a state sponsor of terrorism, significantly improved its ties with Washington during the Trump administration and agreed in 2020 to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Sudan’s worsening civil war, which has included the targeting of civilians, however, has halted these steps towards normalization. And the Biden administration imposed new sanctions on both the SAF and RSF in recent months.
As part of Iran’s bolstered ties with Khartoum, Tehran has begun sending attack drones to the SAF in recent months, U.S. and Arab officials familiar with the intelligence told Semafor. The SAF is expected to deploy the Mohajer-6 drones to try and block RSF offensive operations that have allowed the rebels to gain control of large swathes of central and western Sudan, as well as much of Khartoum, over the past year. The Sudanese government and the SAF’s commander, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, are largely based today out of Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
U.S. and Arab officials said they believe Iran aims to use its relations with the SAF to bolster Tehran’s regional alliances and allow the country to project more power into the strategic waterways in the Red Sea. Prior to Sudan’s 2016 revolution, under dictator Omar al-Bashir, Iran used the North African country as a conduit through which to move arms to allied Palestinian militias fighting Israel from the Gaza strip, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran sent military supplies both via the Red Sea and overland through Sudan and Egypt, according to Israeli officials.
Iran has also used the Red Sea to increase pressure on Israel and the U.S. following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel and the ensuing war. The Yemen-based Houthi militia, which receives drones, cruise missiles and intelligence from Tehran, has regularly been targeting Western commercial ships moving through the Red Sea. And Sudan could provide Tehran with another foothold to strengthen its regional position and potentially impede maritime traffic.
