Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has supported fighters linked to Sudan's Muslim Brotherhood, US senior adviser for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos said on Wednesday.
The role of Iran in Sudan’s civil war has long been under scrutiny, but Mr Boulos’s direct confirmation sheds further light on the issue and draws a clearer link between Tehran and a conflict that has killed and displaced millions.
It also highlights the connection between Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, whose battalions are fighting alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US and several other countries, wields significant influence over the course of the nearly three-year-old civil war.
Western officials and analysts have warned that Islamist factions aligned with the army have been among the strongest opponents of international initiatives aimed at ending the conflict.
They believe the Islamists want the war to end only when they are in a position to take power back.
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has trained and supported fighters tied to the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood’s Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade (BBMB) – a group responsible for horrific abuses against civilians,” Mr Boulos wrote on X.
“We announced our designation of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist as we previously sanctioned the BBMB. These are important steps in holding perpetrators accountable for unrestrained violence, including reported summary executions targeting civilians based on race or ethnicity.
“Together, these actions underscore that the United States remains committed to disrupting the Iranian regime’s efforts to perpetuate bloodshed across the Middle East and beyond.”
The US Department of State announced on Monday that it had designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation.
This followed threats by an Islamist figure fighting alongside the SAF to dispatch men to Iran if the US and Israel launched a ground offensive there.
Al Naji Abdullah, the commander of a brigade of Islamists who have been fighting with the army, appeared in a video circulating online.
Mr Abdullah, who is in his mid-50s, has never held a senior position in Sudan's Islamic movement or the National Conference party of former dictator Omar Al Bashir, himself an Islamist whose 29-year rule ended when his generals removed him from power in 2019 amid a popular uprising.
Army dilemma
However, Mr Abdullah rose to national prominence in 2024 and 2025 through a series of widely-viewed online clips of him and his men as they, with the army, wrested control back from the RSF in areas south of Khartoum and later in the capital.
“He is a controversial figure whose name is always associated with sentimental or virulent comments that he makes,” said prominent Sudanese analyst Osman Al Mirghany.
In his comments, Mr Abdullah said his forces would “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”.
Sudan's army chief and de facto ruler Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, indirectly denounced Mr Abdullah's comments, vowing to take to task anyone who claims to speak for the state of Sudan or its armed forces. But the reality on the ground is much more complicated.
Gen Al Burhan's comments underlined the dilemma in which he has found himself after the outbreak of the war in April 2023: a pressing need for foot soldiers that the Islamists were only too happy to provide, and the criticism that recruiting them has brought him at home and abroad given their track record of abusing, and killing, innocent civilians during the civil wars in South Sudan (1983-2005) and in Darfur (2000s).
In a recent video circulating online, Lt Gen Yasser Al Atta, who serves as the assistant commander-in-chief, said the Muslim Brotherhood has “six or seven battalions fighting alongside us”.
Enlisting Islamists to fight on the army's side has given the RSF an invaluable propaganda advantage, relentlessly reminding everyone that the paramilitary was fighting to rid Sudan of a group responsible for the darkest chapters in the country's post-independence years.
Both the army and the RSF are accused by the UN and the US of war crimes in the current conflict with the paramilitary facing charges of ethnically-motivated killings and the army of indiscriminate shelling.
Mr Abdullah's undated video has surfaced amid a broadening regional conflict following US and Israeli attacks on Iran, and as Sudan’s civil war increasingly overlaps with wider rivalries in both the Middle East and eastern and central Africa.
After the civil war erupted in 2023, Islamist armed factions from Al Bashir era regrouped and joined the army. The Islamists saw in their recruitment by the army a chance to regain influence that could ease their way back to political power.
At the same time, Sudan’s military leadership has strengthened ties with Iran. The pair restored relations in 2023 after years of rupture, and analysts say Tehran has since provided military support, including drones and other weapons, to help the army in its fight against the RSF.
