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As Saudi Arabia\u2019s<\/strong> powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, swept through Washington last week, the agenda was predictably packed with deals: a trillion-dollar investment pledge and access to advanced F-35 fighter jets and coveted American AI technology dominated the headlines. Yet, tucked within these transactions was a significant development for the civil war in Sudan.<\/p>\n Speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that Sudan \u201cwas not on my charts,\u201d viewing the conflict as \u201cjust something that was crazy and out of control\u201d until the Saudi leader pressed the issue. \u201cHis majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan,\u201d Trump recounted, adding that MBS framed it as an opportunity for greatness.<\/p>\n The crown prince\u2019s intervention highlights a crucial new reality that the path to peace, or continued war, in Sudan now runs even more directly through the escalating\u00a0rivalry<\/a>\u00a0between\u00a0Saudi Arabia\u00a0and the United Arab Emirates. The fate of Sudan is being forged in the Persian Gulf, and its future will be decided by which side has more sway in Trump\u2019s White House.<\/p>\n The official peace process is, for all practical purposes, at a dead end. A proposal by Trump\u2019s senior adviser for African affairs, Massad Boulos, for a three-month humanitarian truce, designed as a first step in a road map laid out by the \u201cQuad\u201d (the U.S., Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt), has collided with the irreconcilable positions of the belligerents. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), having just secured a major victory in capturing the last Sudanese army-controlled city in Darfur, nominally accepted the truce while continuing its offensive push.<\/p>\n The fate of Sudan is being forged in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), however, have dug in their heels. Their commander, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has been unequivocal, declaring<\/a> there will be \u201cno truce, no talks or peace\u201d until the RSF lays down its arms and that the current ceasefire proposal is\u00a0\u201cthe worst yet\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 alleging it was a plan to \u201cnullify the existence of the armed forces\u201d while leaving the RSF intact. The\u00a0gap<\/a>\u00a0between the two sides is not one that can easily be bridged.<\/p>\n The grim turning point was the fall of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, to the RSF late last month after a brutal 18-month siege. The city\u2019s capture was accompanied by horrifying reports of mass killings, systematic rape and ethnically targeted atrocities that the U.N.\u2019s human rights chief\u00a0ca<\/u>lled<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe epicenter of human suffering in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n The RSF\u2019s battlefield successes are underwritten by significant foreign support, chiefly from the United Arab Emirates. U.N. experts and American\u00a0lawmakers<\/a>\u00a0have accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with weapons, including advanced drones that have given it a decisive edge. Abu Dhabi officially denies this, but the reputational damage following the atrocities committed by the RSF in El Fasher has become undeniable. Estimates of the death toll in the city\u00a0range<\/a>\u00a0from 2,000 up to tens of thousands, while roughly 90,000 civilians have fled El Fasher since its takeover by the RSF,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the U.N.<\/p>\n In an interesting admission, Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati diplomatic envoy, recently conceded in a statement that the gulf powers made a \u201ccritical mistake\u201d by not opposing the 2021 coup that empowered the generals of both warring parties and crushed the prospect of a \u201ccivilian government,\u201d which the UAE now\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0for. While\u00a0framed<\/a>\u00a0as a moment of sober reflection, the statement also serves as an attempt to distance Abu Dhabi from the RSF\u2019s gruesome actions and bolster its claim to neutrality in the conflict.<\/p>\n This diplomatic signaling is backed by an aggressive\u00a0media\u00a0campaign. Sky News Arabia, a joint venture partly controlled by the UAE\u2019s vice president, dispatched a reporter to El Fasher, and the resulting coverage predictably downplayed<\/a> humanitarian suffering while attempting to legitimize the paramilitary force. This on-the-ground narrative warfare complements a wider effort by Emirati\u00a0influencers<\/a>\u00a0to shift blame onto the SAF and its Islamist allies for the atrocities committed in El Fasher, despite the army\u2019s total withdrawal from the city when attacks on civilians took place. The calculation in Abu Dhabi appears to be that the fallout will be manageable, banking on its media machine and ironclad\u00a0ties<\/a>\u00a0with Trump to ride out the storm.<\/p>\n Yet this attempt at public repositioning is running up against hardening views in Washington. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently\u00a0signaled<\/a>\u00a0this growing impatience, stating recently that \u201csomething needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support that the RSF is getting.\u201d At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing months ago, he was even more explicit,\u00a0naming<\/a>\u00a0the UAE directly and \u201cother countries\u201d he accused of waging a \u201cproxy war that is destabilizing the region.\u201c<\/p>\n Moreover, in a significant move last week, Senate Democrats, led by Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., attempted<\/a>\u00a0to pass the \u201cStand Up for Sudan Act,\u201c which would have suspended all U.S. arms sales to the UAE until the White House could certify it was no longer arming the RSF. While the bill was blocked, it signals increasing, bipartisan congressional unease with Abu Dhabi\u2019s role in Sudan\u2019s brutal war.<\/p>\n Indeed, the prolonged conflict has raised the specter of complete state collapse in Sudan, a risk accelerated by the fall of El Fasher. This victory has freed up RSF manpower and resources to press eastwards, threatening to reclaim central Sudan and Khartoum, from which the army expelled the group last year. This places the SAF (and the remnant state it represents) in existential peril, a worry now shared by a growing regional bloc, with Egypt and Turkey\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0coordinating to bolster the SAF\u2019s capacities.<\/p>\n Just after El Fasher\u2019s fall, Egypt\u2019s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty traveled to Port Sudan for urgent talks with army chief al-Burhan. In an interview aboard his plane en route to Sudan\u2019s wartime capital, Abdelatty\u00a0framed<\/a>\u00a0Egypt\u2019s intervention in clear national security terms, warning that the war risked a \u201cdivision\u201c that would be \u201cextremely dangerous\u201c not just for Sudan, but for Egypt itself. Abdelatty added that Sudan\u2019s military \u201ccannot be replaced by parallel entities,\u201d a clear and forceful rejection of the RSF\u2019s legitimacy.<\/p>\n The prolonged conflict has raised the specter of complete state collapse in Sudan.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n For these regional powers, backing the army is a pragmatic calculation. The army-led government holds the country\u2019s U.N. seat and controls the last vestiges of state machinery necessary for providing public services and enabling the return of millions of displaced Sudanese, a process already underway, with the U.N.\u00a0reporting<\/a>\u00a0that over a million people have returned to army-controlled Khartoum.<\/p>\n This prospect of a failed state on its doorstep deeply alarms Saudi Arabia, and is directly responsible for its recent and forceful diplomatic intervention. With less than 200 miles of the Red Sea separating them, Riyadh fears a failed Sudan would become a nexus for migrants, terrorism and trafficking in arms and drugs like\u00a0captagon<\/a>\u00a0(for which production boomed after Sudan\u2019s civil war erupted), directly threatening its own security and the crown prince\u2019s Vision 2030 goals. Against this backdrop, Saudi support for a central authority is a strategic imperative, and it has openly\u00a0signaled<\/a>\u00a0its support for preserving Sudan\u2019s \u201clegitimate institutions,\u201d a clear diplomatic endorsement of the national army over its paramilitary rival.<\/p>\n According to sources briefed on a call between Mohammed bin Salman and al-Burhan before the crown prince departed for Washington, the SAF chief\u00a0insisted<\/a>\u00a0that the war could not end without American pressure on the UAE, a request the crown prince promised to carry directly to the White House. This lobbying appears to have gone beyond a simple request for pressure. According to a PBS News\u00a0report<\/a>, Saudi Arabia\u2019s \u201cask\u201c of the White House included not only designating the RSF as a foreign terrorist organization, but also the extreme step of imposing secondary sanctions on the UAE itself for its role in arming the paramilitary. Al-Burhan seemed to\u00a0confirm\u00a0the success of this back-channel effort in a\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0on X shortly after Trump\u2019s announcement, pointedly thanking both leaders: \u201cThank you, His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman, thank you President Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, the formal peace process, embodied by the Quad and led by a single American envoy with an impossibly vast portfolio, remains a sideshow. The real determinant of Sudan\u2019s future will be shaped by the intensifying competition for influence with the White House between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n Mohammed bin Salman has made his move in Washington, the question now is how Mohammed bin Zayed will respond.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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