Death from Above: How Iranian Drones Reshaped Sudan's Civil War — and Why the World Looked Away

In January 2024, satellite imagery from Planet Labs revealed Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones and a ground-control vehicle sitting on the runway at Wadi Sayyidna air base, 22 kilometers north of Khartoum [1]. The images confirmed what intelligence analysts had suspected for weeks: Iran had entered Sudan's civil war as an arms supplier to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the conflict's lethality was about to increase sharply.

Three years into a war that has killed over 120,000 people and displaced more than 14 million — making it the world's largest displacement crisis — the proliferation of foreign-supplied drones to both sides has transformed what began as an intra-military power struggle into a proxy-fueled catastrophe [2][3].

The Drones Arrive

Sudan's civil war erupted in April 2023 when the SAF, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti), turned on each other after failing to agree on the terms of integrating the RSF into the national army [4].

In the early months, the SAF struggled against RSF ground forces in Khartoum and across Darfur. Military analysts credit Iranian drone deliveries with preventing the SAF from collapsing under RSF pressure in early 2024 [1]. Between December 2023 and July 2024, at least seven cargo flights operated by Qeshm Fars Air — a U.S.-sanctioned airline with documented ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force — traveled between Tehran and Port Sudan [5]. No such flights had been recorded in 2023.

The Mohajer-6 is a medium-altitude, long-endurance drone manufactured by Qods Aviation Industries, a U.S.-sanctioned entity since 2013. It can carry precision-guided munitions and conduct surveillance missions lasting several hours. Its deployment gave the SAF a strike capability it previously lacked against dispersed RSF positions [6].

By late 2024, Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab identified a separate drone type — the Chinese-made FH-95 — at RSF-controlled Nyala Airport, indicating that the RSF had also acquired foreign drone technology, reportedly through UAE supply channels [7].

A Measurable Escalation

The impact of drone proliferation on the conflict is quantifiable. Drone strikes in Sudan rose from approximately 112 in 2023 to 277 in 2024 — and then to 472 in 2025, a 70% year-over-year increase [8]. Sudan accounted for more than half of all drone strikes recorded across 13 African countries in 2024 [8].

Source: ACLED / Sudan Tribune

Data as of Jan 1, 2026CSV

The civilian toll has been severe. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 3,384 civilians died in the first six months of 2025 alone, a figure representing 80% of the 4,238 civilian deaths recorded in all of 2024 [9]. Over 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes between January 1 and March 15, 2026 [10].

Specific incidents illustrate the pattern. In January 2025, a drone struck the Saudi Maternal Teaching Hospital in El Fasher, killing more than 70 people, according to the World Health Organization [3]. In September 2025, a strike on Abu Shouk displacement camp killed nearly 75 [3]. In December 2025, drone attacks across Sudan's Kordofan region killed over 100 civilians, with the UN reporting strikes on a kindergarten and a hospital in Kadugli [11]. A December 2025 drone strike on power infrastructure plunged major Sudanese cities into darkness [12].

The Supply Chains

Iran's delivery route to the SAF runs through Port Sudan, the government's wartime capital and primary remaining port. Qeshm Fars Air cargo flights from Tehran to Port Sudan form the documented backbone of this supply line [5]. In a separate case, an Iranian woman was arrested in California in 2024 for allegedly brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of Iranian-manufactured ammunition to Sudan [5].

The RSF's drone supply chain runs through a different network. The UAE has been identified by the UN Panel of Experts, Amnesty International, and multiple Western governments as providing weapons to the RSF through transit points in Libya, Chad, Uganda, and breakaway regions of Somalia [13][14]. In May 2025, Amnesty International documented advanced Chinese-made weaponry — including components consistent with Wing Loong drones — reaching RSF forces in Darfur via UAE supply channels, in violation of the UN arms embargo [14].

Both supply chains violate the UN Security Council arms embargo on Darfur, originally imposed under Resolution 1556 (2004) and extended under subsequent resolutions. Human Rights Watch has called for expanding the embargo to cover all of Sudan, as it currently applies only to Darfur [15]. Private arms companies from Serbia and Russia have also exported weapons into Sudan in breach of the embargo, according to Amnesty International [16].

Iran's Strategic Calculus

Iran's interest in Sudan extends beyond the transactional. Bloomberg reported in December 2024 that Iran has sought a permanent naval base at Port Sudan — a request Sudan has so far declined, but one that analysts expect to resurface as the SAF's dependence on Iranian hardware deepens [17].

Sudan's Red Sea coast sits adjacent to the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a maritime chokepoint that the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have already demonstrated they can disrupt [18]. A naval presence at Port Sudan would give Iran a logistics anchor on the African side of the Red Sea, complementing its existing influence through the Houthis and broadening its "axis of resistance" network.

Analysts at the Middle East Forum have described the arrangement as a strategic barter: Iran provides drones and munitions the SAF needs to survive, and in return gains influence over a government that controls one of East Africa's most strategically located coastlines [18]. By late March 2026, battlefield footage showed Iranian military trainers working with Sudanese recruits, indicating a deepening of the relationship beyond arms sales to direct capacity-building [19].

The Other Arms Suppliers

Framing the Sudan conflict as an Iranian problem risks obscuring the broader arms flow. The UAE's weapons transfers to the RSF are, by most accounts, larger in scale and more sustained than Iran's deliveries to the SAF [13][14].

Two intelligence reports from September 2024 found that UAE weapons shipments to the RSF had accelerated, including Chinese armed and unarmed drones, heavy machine guns, small arms, mortars, and artillery [13]. Egypt has been accused of providing the SAF with aerial support, Chinese-made K-8 fighter jets, ammunition, and military intelligence [20]. Saudi Arabia has provided financial and logistical support to the SAF, viewing Sudan as a buffer against Iranian influence in the region [20]. Russia's Africa Corps (formerly Wagner Group) initially backed the RSF before shifting support toward the SAF, reportedly offering military aid in exchange for a naval base agreement at Port Sudan [20].

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

The selective international focus on Iranian drones — while significant — has drawn criticism. Sudan is now the fourth-largest refugee-producing country in the world, generating 2.5 million refugees, behind only Syria (5.5 million), Ukraine (5.3 million), and Afghanistan (4.8 million) [21]. Yet the diplomatic and media attention it receives is far smaller than what those other crises command.

The Double Standard

When Iran began supplying Shahed-136 drones to Russia for use against Ukrainian cities in 2022, the response was swift. The EU imposed new sanctions on Iranian entities, the U.S. expanded designations against Iran's drone program, and the issue dominated multiple UN General Assembly sessions [22].

The reaction to Iranian drones in Sudan has been muted by comparison. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned Iranian entities involved in drone procurement and, in a separate action, sanctioned Colombian nationals recruiting mercenaries for the RSF [23]. But no coordinated multilateral sanctions package targeting Iran's Sudan drone pipeline has materialized. No UN Security Council resolution has specifically addressed the Iranian transfers.

The contrast raises questions about whether international enforcement of arms proliferation norms depends on the geopolitical salience of the victims. A Chatham House analysis from September 2025 argued that "no Western government currently considers Sudan a priority," despite the scale of the crisis [24]. A Foreign Policy assessment from April 2026 went further, characterizing the Western response as evidence of a "deterioration of Western diplomatic corps" capacity on African conflicts [25].

In September 2025, the Trump administration helped broker a five-principle "roadmap" for peace in Sudan, with the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt agreeing to push for an immediate ceasefire and a nine-month transition to civilian rule [26]. By early 2026, that diplomacy had stalled, caught in a dispute between Saudi Arabia and the UAE — two of the very countries accused of fueling the war through rival arms pipelines [26].

Drone Warfare's Humanitarian Toll

The introduction of drones has changed the character of Sudan's war in ways that extend beyond casualty counts. Health workers in El Fasher report that mosques, hospitals, and schools have become routine drone targets, creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear that disrupts medical care and education [27].

Source: UNHCR / IOM

Data as of Apr 1, 2026CSV

Sudan's internal displacement has grown from roughly 1 million people in April 2023 to over 11.5 million by early 2026, with more than 15 million total displaced when counting those who crossed international borders [28]. Sudan leads the world in internally displaced persons, ahead of Colombia (7.1 million), Syria (6.5 million), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.2 million) [21].

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

The precedent this sets for sub-Saharan Africa is significant. Sudan has minimal air-defense infrastructure, making it an permissive environment for drone operations. If relatively inexpensive Iranian and Chinese drones can reshape a conflict of this scale with limited international consequence, the incentive for drone proliferation into other African conflict zones — the Sahel, the eastern DRC, northern Mozambique — increases [6].

The Coverage Gap

Sudan's war has been called "the world's forgotten war" — a label that itself has become a recurring headline without producing sustained coverage [1]. Several structural factors explain the gap.

Access is a primary constraint. Both the SAF and the RSF have restricted journalist entry, and the destruction of communications infrastructure has made reporting from conflict zones extremely difficult [25]. The international press corps presence in Sudan is minimal compared to Ukraine, where hundreds of foreign correspondents operate.

Editorial resource allocation reflects audience interest and advertising revenue, both of which tend to track geopolitical proximity to Western capitals. Sudan competes for attention with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, climate disasters, and domestic political cycles in the U.S. and Europe.

The coverage gap has material consequences for policy. Without sustained public attention, there is less political cost for governments that fail to act. Arms embargo enforcement, sanctions escalation, and diplomatic pressure all require political will — and political will, in democratic systems, is partly a function of media salience.

Over 4,300 children have been killed or maimed since the war began, with more than 5,700 grave violations against children recorded [28]. At least 245 child casualties were documented in the first three months of 2026 alone, a sharp increase over the same period in 2025 [28]. These figures, reported by UN agencies, have generated brief cycles of coverage rather than the sustained attention that might pressure governments to cut off the weapons flows sustaining the conflict.

What Comes Next

The war in Sudan shows no signs of ending. The SAF has regained territory with the help of Iranian drones, but the RSF retains control of large portions of Darfur and central Sudan. Neither side appears capable of achieving a decisive military victory, and the diplomatic process remains stalled [26].

The arms pipelines — Iranian drones to the SAF, UAE weapons to the RSF, Egyptian and Saudi support flowing to various factions — continue to operate with limited enforcement of the existing UN embargo. The embargo itself covers only Darfur, leaving the rest of Sudan outside its formal scope [15].

What is clear is that the foreign drone supply has raised the conflict's lethality, its civilian toll, and its humanitarian consequences to levels that the international system has so far chosen not to match with a proportionate response.