Sudan's ongoing civil war is not just a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former military allies-turned rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is a calculated power grab by the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, recently listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The US announced plans to formally classify the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) starting March 16, 2026, and accused it of carrying out mass violence against civilians during Sudan's ongoing war. Meanwhile, the terrorist organization appears to be using the SAF as a Trojan horse to dominate northeast Africa and the Red Sea – a critical artery for global commerce.
The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be using the SAF to take over Sudan. SAF leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and Ali Karti, secretary-general of the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM), the local iteration of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, maintain a strategic alliance. This partnership supports both SAF operations amid the civil war and the Muslim Brotherhood's political goals.
To gain influence and bolster their position in the Sudanese civil war, the SAF has relied partially on Iranian support. Before the 2026 war in Iran erupted on February 28 with the US-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran supplied the SAF with weapons (including drones), munitions, intelligence support, and technical assistance.
This deepening alignment was starkly illustrated earlier this month, when a video circulated online featuring Al Naji Abdullah, a Muslim Brotherhood high-ranking figure and a commander aligned with the SAF. In the clip, speaking on behalf of Sudanese "mujahideen" operating within and alongside the SAF structure, Abdullah voiced explicit support for Iran and threatened to mobilize Sudanese fighters if US and Israeli ground forces entered Iran:
"We support Iran and we say it from here in Sudan. If the Americans and the Zionists deploy ground forces in Iran, we will send forces from among us to confront them. We say this openly... we will send all our battalions to fight there."
The SAF, however, was ultimately forced to adjust its public messaging when Iran kept on launching missile and drone barrages at neighboring Gulf states, striking many targets, including in Saudi Arabia. Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan, Saudi Arabia has become the principal supporter of the SAF. The Iranian strikes on Saudi territory forced the kingdom to adopt a sharper stance. Saudi Arabia condemned Iran's "brazen and cowardly" attacks, declared its right to respond militarily, and hardened its rhetoric toward Iran in a clear shift from its earlier caution.
This shift exposes a contradiction at the core of Saudi Arabia's regional policy. The kingdom continues to support the SAF, whose battlefield survival has depended in part on weapons and assistance previously supplied by the very Iranian regime now targeting Saudi territory. Saudi Arabia's ideological red lines have long included deep hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood — but only within its own borders. Beyond the kingdom, Saudi policy has increasingly shown support to Muslim Brotherhood-backed groups. In Yemen, for instance, Saudi Arabia, stirring up trouble in the neighborhood, has been supporting and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood's Islah Party.
Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan in April of 2023, Saudi Arabia has become the principal supporter of the SAF.
Saudi Arabia also financed a major arms deal between Pakistan and the SAF, valued at approximately $1.5 billion. More recently, the Sudan's army-backed government signed a deal with a Saudi company for gold exploration along the Red Sea coast.
Under these circumstances, the SAF quickly pivoted to echoing Saudi Arabia's hardened rhetoric, condemning Iran and aligning its public messaging with that of its principal financial patron. Yet the SAF's deep ideological links to the Muslim Brotherhood suggest that this rhetorical shift does not represent a genuine break with the broader Islamist currents that have historically intersected with the ideology of the Iranian regime. As a result, the SAF's denunciations of Iran do not represent a geopolitical repositioning, but rather an act of political opportunism.
For the West, Saudi Arabia can and should be a partner in confronting the Iranian threat — especially after Iran's direct assaults on Gulf states and global energy security. Partnership, however, cannot mean indulgence. The West needs simultaneously to stand firm against the Muslim Brotherhood's transnational network, which has repeatedly proven destabilizing — from Sudan's decades of Islamist rule and genocide, to its facilitation of jihadist transit and weapons smuggling.
Saudi support to the SAF risks continuing the entrenchment of Islamist jihadi aggression, whether Sunni or Shiite, that threatens regional stability.
For the West, the lesson of 2026 is straightforward: oppose Iran without apology — and also oppose the Muslim Brotherhood without apology. Anything less rewards terrorism and prolongs instability in the Arab and Muslim world.
If Saudi Arabia wants to be considered an ally of the United States, it needs to have zero tolerance for extremist ideology and to understand that Washington cannot accept any rehabilitation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Supporting the SAF, which is infused with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates who maintain ideological and operational links with Iran's proxies, risks undermining the very objectives that the West claims to pursue in the region. Alliances built on short-term tactical convenience may appear useful in the moment, but they can ultimately empower the same ideological and geopolitical forces that Western governments are trying to contain. The West cannot afford to have fake alliances that ultimately empower the threats the West is claiming to fight.
