Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Khartoum (Agenzia Fides) – Sudan has become another battleground in the struggle between the Israeli-American coalition and Iran. This follows the United States' designation of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a "terrorist" group, accusing it of receiving support from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
"The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood is using unbridled violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and to promote its violent Islamist ideology," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement released Monday (March 9). The day before, on Sunday, March 8, Sudanese authorities released a prominent Islamist figure after he had been detained for three months for expressing support for Iran. Earlier, the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, warned the leaders of the Islamist brigades and factions fighting alongside the army against heeding calls to join Iran in its war against the United States and Israel.
The Trump administration's decision was welcomed by the government of the United Arab Emirates, which supports the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the militias fighting against the government in Khartoum, which are themselves already under US sanctions. The Muslim Brotherhood plays a significant role in the current conflict in Sudan, as several of its members are integrated into the SAF. According to a report by the Ethiopian Institute of Foreign Affairs, the Sudanese army has absorbed approximately 15,000 fighters from an armed militia linked to the Muslim Brotherhood into its ranks since the outbreak of the civil war in 2023. In its analysis, the Ethiopian institute expresses concern about the potential transformation of the SAF, which forms the backbone of the Sudanese state, into a military corps adhering to Islamist ideology, or about the creation of alternative command structures within the SAF that oppose those of the government. However, Ethiopia is not a neutral observer, as it has a dispute with Khartoum and Cairo (which supports the SAF) over the dam on the Nile. According to Turkish sources (the government in Ankara is the other major ally of the SAF), Ethiopia has reportedly become the new logistics hub for the United Arab Emirates to arm the RSF, after the country was forced to scale back its own activities in Libya, Puntland, and Chad. The sources also state that Ethiopia has opened a camp for the RSF on the Sudanese border, and that drone attacks against Sudan are being coordinated from its territory. The Sudanese war is thus a conflict involving several states in the region, which often form seemingly bizarre alliances. For example, the US government's accusations that Iran supports the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, allied with the SAF, place Tehran on the side of Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia; the latter two countries are now targets of Iranian bombing following the war initiated by Israel and the United States on February 28. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 10/3/2026)
