While the Straits of Hormuz are the immediate global focus of the death-match between Iran’s IRGC and the Trump-Netanyahu axis of destruction, breaths are baited on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula where the Houthis, from their strongholds in north-west Yemen, have their missiles trained on that other crucial chokepoint, the Bab-al-Mandab straits at the southern end of the Red Sea.

With the high geopolitical stakes involved, and that additional threat in play for global shipping, there is additional impetus to Saudi Arabia’s imperative to secure its influence over Sudan. Saudi Arabia will be seeking to reassert what analysts benignly describe as “state power” in Sudan, favouring control by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) over the east/centre, and a unitary state that can secure the Red Sea littoral. 

What ‘state power’ means for the Sudanese people is clear only the extent that it does not augur well for a future end to the civil war. It certainly doesn’t mean a settlement leading to anything other than the entrenchment of the SAF regime and its........

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