Last year, Sudan’s army was flying drones with a clear origin. Satellite images caught Mohajer-6 airframes parked on the runway at Wadi Sayyidna — an Iranian-designed platform the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said it had shot down over Omdurman for the third time. Tehran, seeking a foothold on the Red Sea, had quietly become the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) most important military patron, running cargo flights into Port Sudan and reportedly negotiating restored diplomatic ties as the drones landed.

This year, the wreckage in Sudan’s fields carries a different label. In May, the Sudanese army used a Turkish-made Bayraktar Akıncı to shoot down a rival Akıncı-type drone believed to be flown by the RSF, in what analysts called the first confirmed case of one-armed drone destroying another over Sudanese airspace. RSF fighters have separately posted footage of their own downed Akıncı airframes near El-Fasher. The shift from Iranian to Turkish wreckage on Sudan’s battlefields is not a procurement coincidence. It is the clearest available evidence of a regional realignment triggered by Iran’s own war.

Iran doesn’t have drones to spare right now. The US and Israel spent months bombing its missile and weapons facilities, and Tehran responded with a barrage of its own: Roughly 4,400 one-way attack drones fired at Israel and Gulf targets in the war’s first weeks alone. That kind of expenditure eats into the same industrial base that once supplied Sudan. Iran will likely rebuild its own stockpiles before anyone else’s, and Tehran will likely trim deliveries to more distant clients like the SAF rather than its closer proxies. Months into the conflict, the SAF has made the call itself, halting Iranian purchases to look better to Washington ahead of ceasefire talks.

So, into that vacuum has stepped a trio of suppliers — Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan — each pursuing its own interests.

Iran’s retreat, new suppliers

Turkey’s role is the most consequential. Baykar, maker of the Bayraktar line, covertly funneled more than $120 million in drones, warheads and command systems to the SAF, equipment credited with helping the army retake Khartoum, el-Gezira and North Kordofan. A secret launch site reportedly even exists inside Egypt itself: a base at East Oweinat in the country’s southwest, from which Turkish-made Akıncı drones are reportedly flown against the RSF with Cairo’s approval.

Cairo, however, does more than host Ankara’s hardware. Egypt has its own supply line to Sudan. After the RSF took El-Fasher almost a year ago, Egyptian officials began coordinating troop movements with the SAF and providing operational guidance and weapons directly. Yet, the relationship began earlier. After Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan flew to Ankara in 2023, Egypt handed over the SAF Bayraktar TB2 drones and trained Sudanese crews to fly them. According to Cairo, it’s all about the Nile and its border security. Regardless of the stated reason, Egypt and Turkey are now the SAF’s most reliable arms suppliers.

Pakistan is the newest and largest entrant. The Sudanese army received Pakistani-made Mohafiz armored vehicles and Shahpar reconnaissance drones this summer, part of a reported $1.5 billion package that also includes K-8 light attack aircraft, more than 200 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and possibly JF-17 fighter aircraft. The deal is said to be financed by a third party, with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Islamabad publicly credited with brokering it.

However, Riyadh’s fingerprints extend further still, into the war economy itself.

Gold, Gulf capital, war finance

Sudan’s gold, not oil, is what keeps the SAF’s weapons flowing. Chatham House researchers have traced how roughly 60% of gold produced in army-held Northern, River Nile and Red Sea states is smuggled into Egypt, entering formal trading circuits that ultimately fund arms purchases. A separate GIS Reports account, drawing on Chatham House research, notes Cairo’s central bank has adjusted policy specifically to absorb that Sudanese gold. Layered atop that gold-backed liquidity is direct Gulf financing, with Saudi Arabia, wary of Iranian influence along the Red Sea, emerging as the SAF’s chief Gulf patron and the presumed underwriter of the Pakistani deal.

What links Cairo, Ankara, Islamabad and Riyadh is not ideology but opportunity. Iran’s drone diplomacy in Sudan was built on cheap, exportable hardware and a willingness to sell to a sanctioned army few others would touch. Weakened by its own war, Tehran has ceded that market. 

The SAF still wants what Iran once supplied: precision strike capability against a paramilitary force it cannot otherwise dislodge. Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, each for reasons rooted in their own regional calculations, have been only too willing to answer that demand, with Gulf gold and Saudi capital paying the bill.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.