Iran and its Proxy War in Sudan (3/4)

Analytical focus on the war in Sudan which, since 2023, has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced persons, with a particularly devastating human cost in Darfur, where mass violence, sieges and forced displacement have taken on a dimension that many international actors now describe as genocidal.

It seems necessary to analyze Iran's role in the Sudanese conflict alone, even though the latter does not present itself in the classic form of an identified sponsor, an overt political support or an assumed alliance. It is more diffuse, more indirect, but, in many respects, more structuring. Tehran is not a central actor in the Sudanese theater; it is a kind of strategic amplifier, inscribing the conflict in a broader regional architecture, dominated by the Red Sea and new forms of asymmetric warfare.

For several years, Iranian strategy has been based on a constant principle: extending strategic depth without exposing itself frontally. This logic has been tested in Lebanon with Hezbollah, in Syria through the Alawite regime, in Iraq via Shiite militias and in Yemen thanks to Houthi ambitions. It therefore relies on networks, local relays, and transfers of know-how more than on visible deployments. Sudan, long peripheral in Iranian mapping, is gradually regaining a functional place in this whole.

This return is explained first by the increasing centrality of the Red Sea. Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza and the rise of the Houthis in Yemen, the Red Sea has become an area of indirect confrontation between the Iranian axis and Western powers, as well as a major point of friction with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Attacks on commercial shipping, threats to energy routes, drone and missile strikes have transformed this maritime space into a direct extension of Middle East conflicts.

In this context, Sudan appears as an area of depth, rather than a front. Its coastline, its ports, its grey security zones offer a useful backdrop, without requiring explicit political involvement. Iran does not need to control Sudan, nor even to have an official ally there. It is enough for the country to remain unstable, fragmented, incapable of durably securing its coasts and infrastructures.

Evidence of a tactical rapprochement between Tehran and the Sudanese army has thus multiplied since 2024. Accusations of Iranian drone deliveries to the Sudanese Armed Forces, although systematically denied, are part of a logic already observed elsewhere, that of a transfer of capabilities rather than direct presence. Drones, due to their limited cost, flexibility, and psychological impact, constitute the ideal tool for this strategy. They make it possible to compensate for structural weaknesses without modifying the internal political balance.

But it would be simplistic to read Iranian involvement as a mere occasional military support to the Sudanese army. Iran is not seeking to save the Sudanese state. It is not part of a stabilization logic. What interests it is the controlled disorganization of a strategic maritime space, which forces its adversaries to disperse their means and multiply theaters of attention. A strategy of subversion that is found, moreover, as a hallmark of Tehran almost everywhere in the Middle East.

From this perspective, the Sudanese war thus functions as a saturation conflict. It is not an objective in itself, but an element of an enlarged conflictual landscape, where each peripheral crisis weakens the overall response capacity of Western powers and their regional allies. Sudan, like Somalia or Yemen, becomes a space where conflict is tolerable precisely because it is far from decision-making centers.

This strategy finds a particular echo in the contemporary transformation of war. Drones, long-range strikes, and cross-border logistical networks make it possible to conduct conflicts of low political intensity but high human intensity. Thus, attacks against Port Sudan and targeted strikes against sensitive infrastructures demonstrate that even supposedly secured areas remain vulnerable. And this vulnerability is in itself a strategic message…

For Saudi Arabia, this evolution is particularly worrying, insofar as the security of the Red Sea is a pillar of its economic, tourist, and geopolitical ambitions. Any prolonged instability on the African shore weakens this projection. Iran does not need to directly challenge Riyadh; it simply needs to contribute to an environment where stabilization becomes costly, uncertain, and politically risky.

For the United Arab Emirates, the situation is more ambivalent. Their indirect approach to Sudan, based on networks and non-state actors, sometimes resonates with Iranian logic, without however being a matter of coordination. It is not an alliance, but an objective convergence of methods consisting in prioritizing flexibility, avoiding direct exposure, and accepting instability as a lasting parameter.

Iran also benefits from the weakening of the international normative framework. In a system where the qualification of genocide, sanctions, and condemnations no longer lead to strategic rupture, room for maneuver expands. The Sudanese war then becomes an additional example of this normalization of extreme violence on the periphery, which objectively benefits actors seeking to delegitimize the liberal international order.

Finally, one essential point must be emphasized: Iran has no interest in a rapid victory for either Sudanese side. A clear victory for the army, supported by Riyadh and Cairo, would strengthen a hostile axis. Total domination by the RSF, backed by Emirati networks, would produce another form of regional consolidation. Iranian interest lies in the in-between, in the prolongation of a conflict that prevents any stable recomposition. Playing on the contradictions of others ensures, by default, a victory for Tehran. Thus, the Iranian role in the Sudanese war is measured neither in square kilometers conquered, nor in official declarations. It is read in the duration of the conflict, in its ability to be part of a regional continuum of crises, in the way it contributes to transforming the Red Sea into an area of permanent tension.

Sudan, in this interpretation, is neither an ally nor an enemy. Nothing but a vector; a space where war, stripped of any political finality, becomes one instrument among others of global strategic rivalry… The cynicism of realpolitik pushed to the extreme.

Read also on the same topic:

Sudan's Collapse: War for War's Sake (1/4)

Red Sea, Gulf, and Horn of Africa: The Regionalization of the Sudanese Conflict (2/4)

Next article: Sudan's War: Scenarios, False Settlements, and Strategic Dead Ends (4/4)