Sudan’s war has never been merely Sudanese. It began, formally, as a struggle between two armed monsters produced by the same political system: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces. But it soon became something much larger—a proxy war fought at the junction between the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, financed by Gulf rivalries, equipped by regional arms suppliers and prolonged by governments that publicly demand peace while privately selecting their preferred belligerent. The latest American sanctions over the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Sudanese Armed Forces add yet another layer to this regional catastrophe. The measures, which entered into force on July 20, constitute the second stage of sanctions imposed under the US Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act. They expand export restrictions, introduce additional financial and aviation-related limitations and require Washington to oppose international loans and financial assistance to Sudan. According to the United States, a national technical assessment concluded that the SAF used prohibited chemical agents during the civil war. Khartoum rejects the accusation, describing it as politically motivated and unsupported by evidence. Washington, for its part, has acknowledged that it did not conduct an investigation inside Sudan but insists that its technical findings were sufficiently rigorous to justify sanctions. It has demanded immediate and unrestricted access for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and dismissed Sudan’s proposed national inquiry with the perfectly sensible observation that a government accused of using chemical weapons cannot be expected to certify its own innocence. The accusation remains to be independently verified. But even before that happens, its geopolitical consequences are real. Chemical weapons transform a civil war into an international security case. They invite sanctions, place pressure on foreign suppliers and force governments supporting the accused party to decide how much reputational damage they are prepared to absorb. They also threaten the credibility of the Chemical Weapons Convention itself. Sudan joined the Convention in 1999 and currently sits on the OPCW Executive Council, producing the somewhat surreal spectacle of a country accused of chemical warfare participating in the organisation responsible for preventing it. Yet the Sudanese war has long survived on surrealism. The same regional governments that issue declarations about sovereignty and civilian protection have spent years supplying drones, weapons, money, mercenaries and diplomatic cover to the two sides.

On one side stands the SAF, supported in different forms by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Türkiye and Qatar. On the other stands the RSF, whose most important external relationship has repeatedly been traced to the United Arab Emirates, despite Abu Dhabi’s denials. UN experts, American lawmakers, investigative reports and independent researchers have all documented evidence consistent with weapons transfers to the RSF through regional supply routes, particularly via Chad. The UAE maintains that it supports neither side. The remarkable military resilience of the RSF, however, continues to require an explanation considerably more convincing than spontaneous self-sufficiency. This is not a clean ideological division. It is a competition over the regional order.

Egypt supports the Sudanese army because the collapse of the Sudanese state—or its replacement by a powerful tribal-paramilitary federation—would represent a direct threat to Egyptian security. Cairo wants a recognisable state, a central army and a government in Khartoum with which it can negotiate borders, Nile waters and security. It may not particularly admire Burhan, but it understands him. The RSF represents something more dangerous: the normalisation of a heavily armed non-state actor controlling territory, gold mines and international supply routes. Saudi Arabia’s interests are broader. Sudan lies directly across the Red Sea from the kingdom. Its coastline, ports, agricultural land and political orientation matter to Riyadh’s security and economic plans. A fragmented Sudan would threaten Red Sea shipping, facilitate weapons trafficking and create another zone of instability between the Sahel, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Saudi support for the SAF is therefore not simply affection for Sudan’s generals. It reflects the kingdom’s growing insistence that the Red Sea should be governed by states rather than militias, smugglers or Iranian-aligned armed movements. That strategic doctrine has become even clearer with Riyadh’s announcement of a new multinational maritime coalition intended to protect shipping and energy routes through the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden. Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan and Türkiye are among the countries supporting the Saudi initiative, while the UAE and Oman were conspicuously absent from the initial group of formal supporters. The map is revealing. Saudi Arabia is attempting to build a security architecture linking the eastern and western shores of the Red Sea, while Iran and its regional partners retain the ability to threaten maritime traffic from Yemen and beyond. Sudan is not peripheral to this struggle. It is one of its central geographical prizes. Iran understood this early. Tehran restored relations with Sudan and supplied the SAF with armed drones that materially altered the balance of the war. Iranian systems helped the army halt RSF advances and recover territory around Khartoum. The relationship offered Iran more than an arms market. Sudan provides access to the Red Sea, proximity to Saudi Arabia and a possible logistical position opposite the Arabian Peninsula. For a country whose strategic method has long depended on cultivating armed and political footholds around its rivals, Sudan is almost too tempting to ignore. This creates one of the war’s central contradictions. Saudi Arabia and Iran have both, at different moments and for different reasons, favoured the survival of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Riyadh wants a stable state on the Red Sea. Tehran wants access, leverage and strategic depth. The same Sudanese army can therefore receive support from powers that are themselves regional adversaries. There is nothing unusual about this in the contemporary Middle East. Alliances are no longer alliances. They are temporary intersections of interest. Türkiye operates according to the same principle. Ankara’s support for the SAF, including the reported provision of Bayraktar and Akıncı drones, fits into its wider projection across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. Türkiye already possesses a major military presence in Somalia and has long sought influence over Sudanese ports, trade routes and political Islam networks. Supporting Burhan offers Ankara commercial opportunity, defence exports and access to a region where Gulf and Egyptian interests intersect. But Türkiye is also increasingly aligning itself with Saudi security initiatives. Its backing for the new maritime coalition demonstrates how far regional relationships have shifted. Ankara and Riyadh, once bitter competitors over political Islam and the post-Arab Spring order, now find themselves cooperating against maritime instability and the expansion of Iranian-linked threats. Türkiye has not abandoned its own ambitions. It has simply discovered that cooperation with Saudi Arabia may currently be the most efficient way to pursue them. Pakistan’s role is even more illustrative. Islamabad came close to completing a weapons package for the Sudanese army reportedly worth approximately $1.5 billion, including aircraft and other military equipment. The proposed deal would have transformed Pakistan into one of the SAF’s most important external arms suppliers. It also appeared to fit naturally into Pakistan’s expanding defence relationship with Saudi Arabia, including discussions over the supply of JF-17 fighter aircraft to Riyadh. Then Saudi Arabia objected. In April, Pakistan reportedly placed the Sudan deal on hold after Riyadh asked for it to be terminated and declined to finance the purchase. The episode demonstrated with unusual clarity the hierarchy governing Pakistan’s regional freedom of action. Islamabad may manufacture the aircraft and negotiate the sale, but Saudi financial and strategic preferences retain the power to stop it.

The Saudi objection was not necessarily a withdrawal of support from the SAF. It may instead have reflected Riyadh’s desire to control the timing, scale and political conditions of military assistance or to prevent an uncontrolled escalation that would undermine its mediation role. Saudi Arabia wants influence over Burhan, not merely his military victory. A massive Pakistani arms package negotiated outside Saudi management could strengthen the Sudanese army while weakening Riyadh’s leverage over it. Pakistan complied because it could hardly do otherwise. Its economy remains dependent on Gulf deposits, oil facilities and emergency financial assistance. Its armed forces are deeply integrated into Gulf security arrangements, while its defence industry increasingly relies on Middle Eastern customers. Pakistan can present itself as an autonomous Islamic military power, a nuclear state and a mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But when Riyadh draws a line around an issue it considers vital, Islamabad generally discovers the virtues of consultation.

The new Saudi maritime coalition reinforces this relationship. Pakistan’s support places it firmly within Riyadh’s emerging Red Sea security system, even as Islamabad continues to maintain relations with Tehran and occasionally presents itself as a bridge to Iran. This is Pakistan’s habitual geopolitical acrobatics: Saudi money, Chinese weapons partnerships, Iranian diplomacy, Turkish military cooperation and American expectations, all balanced until somebody asks for an actual decision. Sudan has now forced precisely such decisions. The chemical-weapons sanctions complicate the entire pro-SAF coalition. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Iran and Pakistan must now confront the possibility that the army they have supported, supplied or politically protected may have crossed one of the clearest prohibitions in international law. Iran is unlikely to be troubled by American accusations. Tehran has lived under sanctions for decades and understands Sudan primarily through the language of strategic access. Türkiye will insist on evidence and attempt to preserve manoeuvring space. Pakistan will wait to see what Saudi Arabia wants. Egypt will defend the necessity of the Sudanese state while avoiding direct responsibility for the conduct of its army.

Saudi Arabia faces the hardest calculation. It needs the SAF to survive because the alternative could be the consolidation of an Emirati-backed paramilitary power across large parts of Sudan. But it cannot easily build a new Red Sea security architecture around a government internationally accused of chemical warfare. Nor can it ignore the prospect of further sanctions against Sudanese commanders and institutions without risking friction with Washington. The United States, meanwhile, is using the chemical-weapons question to re-enter a conflict in which its political leverage has steadily declined. Sanctions are easier than diplomacy and considerably easier than persuading the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Türkiye to stop using Sudan as a regional chessboard. Washington can restrict exports, block financial assistance and demand an OPCW investigation. It cannot, through sanctions alone, remove the foreign incentives that keep the war alive. Nor can it avoid the accusation of selectivity. The Middle East has seen international law invoked with remarkable enthusiasm against some governments and interpreted with considerable flexibility when violations are committed by useful partners. Sudan’s demand for evidence is not illegitimate merely because the Sudanese army is capable of committing atrocities. An independent OPCW investigation is therefore essential—not to protect Burhan, but to prevent the chemical-weapons prohibition from becoming another instrument applied according to geopolitical convenience. The civilians of Sudan remain almost irrelevant to these calculations. They are trapped between an army accused of deploying prohibited weapons and a paramilitary force accused of massacres, ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and the forced recruitment of children. Iranian and Turkish drones fill the skies. Emirati-linked supply routes sustain the opposite side. Pakistani aircraft were offered for sale. Egypt guards its frontier. Saudi Arabia seeks control of the diplomatic process. Washington imposes sanctions. Everybody speaks of Sudanese sovereignty while treating Sudan as strategic real estate. The war has entered its fourth year because too many external actors benefit from preventing their preferred side from losing, even when none is capable of producing a decisive victory. The chemical-weapons allegations may now intensify Sudan’s isolation. They may also expose the central fiction surrounding the conflict: that it is a domestic struggle occasionally disturbed by foreign involvement. It is the reverse. Sudan is a regional war occasionally fought by Sudanese men. It connects the Gulf rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Iran’s search for Red Sea access, Türkiye’s military-commercial expansion, Egypt’s obsession with state survival and Pakistan’s role as the region’s heavily armed but financially dependent subcontractor. Washington’s sanctions address one alleged weapon. The larger arsenal surrounding Sudan is geopolitical—and no international convention has yet been invented to prohibit that.