Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched a new U.S.-backed push to end Sudan’s civil war during talks with senior State Department officials on June 3, then quickly moved to deepen coordination through a flurry of high-level meetings.
Quad for Sudan
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Senior Adviser for Africa Massad Boulos hosted envoys from the three Arab nations, effectively creating a “Quad for Sudan.” The session set the stage for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to fly to Abu Dhabi for follow-up talks with Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, underscoring rare four-way unity over the 26-month-old conflict.
Diplomats and analysts say the group now hopes to graft its effort onto the existing Saudi-American “Jeddah Platform,” a mediation channel endorsed by the African Union and the regional bloc IGAD but hampered by limited enforcement power.
A war with regional reverberations
Sudan’s war erupted April 15, 2023, pitting General al-Burhan’s forces (SAF), against the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. Fighting has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced some 13 million, according to U.N. estimates, while reports of indiscriminate attacks, sexual violence and possible genocide mount.
The SAF controls most of Khartoum; the RSF holds large swaths of Darfur and has set up civilian administrations there. Each side is accused of receiving outside support: Egypt has been linked to the SAF, the UAE to the RSF — allegations both governments deny.
Washington and its Arab partners fear that Sudan’s collapse could spill weapons, refugees and extremist militants across the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, while opening the door to Russia and Iran.
Moscow last year won provisional rights to build a Red Sea naval base and has hedged by cultivating ties with General al-Burhan’s SAF.
Tehran followed a parallel playbook. After restoring ties with Khartoum in October 2023, Iran began flying Mohajer-6 attack drones to Sudan aboard Qeshm Fars Air—an airline tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It also shipped Ababil drones that Sudanese technicians re-branded “Zagel-3.” Multiple deliveries landed at SAF-controlled Port Sudan International Airport between December 2023 and January 2024.
Iran’s push into Sudan reflects shrinking clout elsewhere as sanctions bite and traditional proxies falter. Seeking to offset setbacks in the Levant and Gulf, Tehran is scrambling for fresh East African beachheads.
For Cairo, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi—backed by Washington and Jerusalem—the priority is stopping Sudan from turning into an Iran-Russia relay. They are equally determined to keep Bashir-era Islamists from staging a comeback, fearing both a regional Islamist surge and renewed Hezbollah-Hamas-al-Qaeda training camps on Sudanese soil.
That rare convergence of interests offers a platform for joint diplomacy. The United States should capitalize by folding the Jeddah talks into the newer Quad format, forging a single, streamlined track.
Unveiled in May 2023, the Jeddah Platform convened indirect talks on humanitarian relief. Lacking any enforcement teeth, it yielded only fragile cease-fire pledges, but it still carries clout with core Sudanese players—chiefly the SAF.
A year and a half later, U.S. envoy Tom Perriello rolled out a Geneva-based forum. Key factions were left off the guest list, and the SAF boycotted over Emirati involvement. Despite broader international participation, Geneva never got the principal belligerents in the same room.
Jeddah, by contrast, is acceptable to both sides and sits nearer—politically and geographically—than a European venue. The newer Quad channel brings heft and leverage. Blending the two would fuse local legitimacy with external muscle, creating the balanced mechanism needed to move the conflict off dead center.
Policy outline
Sudanese journalist and policy analyst Ariel Elhag outlines four steps for fusing the Quad and Jeddah tracks and keeping regional actors aligned:
Joint political declaration
The Quad states, the African Union, IGAD, and other stakeholders should publicly affirm that the Jeddah Platform is now the sole forum for ending Sudan’s war, with all Quad members fully engaged.
Unified administrative hub
A single executive secretariat in Jeddah—staffed by Quad envoys, the UN, the AU, and respected Sudanese civil-society figures—would coordinate diplomacy and prevent mixed messages.
Legal authority through the UN
Transforming the Jeddah declaration into a binding pact via a UN Security Council resolution would give the platform international legal weight. Early coordination with UN envoy Ramtane Lamamra is essential to align regional and global planners.
Full civil-society integration
Ensuring meaningful roles for Sudanese NGOs, tribal leaders, minorities, and political parties would block armed factions or foreign patrons from dominating the talks and match Washington’s long-standing insistence on civilian governance before aid flows.
Elhag stresses that Iran’s ebbing regional influence offers a narrow window to act decisively. Stabilizing Sudan—and steering it back toward the pre-war trajectory of potential normalization with Israel—would weaken Tehran, safeguard Red Sea shipping, deepen Arab-Israeli integration, and reinforce a pro-Western arc from the Gulf to the Horn.
Ignoring Sudan’s crisis, Elhag warns, risks leaving a vacuum ripe for hostile powers to fill.
TASIS strikes the same note
The newly unveiled Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS)—the rebel-civilian coalition headed by RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and SPLM-N leader Abdel Aziz al-Hilu—has publicly echoed calls for a single, consolidated mediation track.
At the 1 July news conference in Nyala, spokesman Alaa Eldin Awad Nugud warned that “overlapping foreign initiatives have only prolonged our people’s agony” and said TASIS is ready to participate in “any unified mechanism that can secure a permanent cease-fire and a democratic transition.”
The alliance stressed its openness to “all political, civil and armed actors who reject war,” urging regional and international sponsors to collapse rival forums into one transparent process focused on civilian needs.
Language in the alliance’s founding charter likewise calls for “an inclusive, civilian-led settlement, mediated by actors trusted by both sides,” mirroring the Quad-plus-Jeddah formula advanced above.
By lining up behind a single track, TASIS adds grassroots weight to the push for diplomatic consolidation—raising the cost of inaction for Washington, Riyadh, Cairo and Abu Dhabi.
