In Yemen, Saudi Arabia appears to have gained the upper hand in its confrontation with allies of the United Arab Emirates, bolstering the position of the internationally recognized government in what many see as a decisive phase of the conflict.
In Sudan, a country where Abu Dhabi is accused of supplying arms to the Rapid Support Forces battling the Sudanese army, comparisons to Yemen are gaining traction—this time with Egypt entering the strategic calculus.
In recent weeks, Riyadh has moved aggressively to reassert its leadership in Yemen, throwing its full weight behind the internationally recognized government against the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council.
After the council, through a broad offensive in December, imposed its control over several southern areas, government forces launched a counteroffensive and retook major cities, including Aden, along with areas in Hadramawt and Al-Mahad.
The Saudi move has been described as a strategic blow to the UAE’s plans in Yemen.
“The Yemeni and Sudanese scenes are identical in essence,” said Hisham Abbas, a Sudanese journalist and writer, in comments to Alhurra.
But Sudan is also considered an “security depth” for Egypt, tied to the waters of the Nile. For Saudi Arabia, it is a “parallel coast” on the Red Sea and a theater connected to its major economic projects.
According to Abbas, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working to avert the breakdown of Sudan’s “central state” in favor of armed militias that could redraw regional power dynamics. The key distinction, he said, is the magnitude of the risk—Yemen’s dispute is political, centered on the structure of the state, while the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan pose a direct threat to Egypt’s vital interests.
Abbas argues that “the control of these forces over strategic sites such as the Sennar Dam effectively means handing the keys to the Nile’s waters to Ethiopia,” something Cairo views as an existential threat that admits no compromise.
Saudi Arabia, for its part, is not far from the Sudan file. Reports indicate that Riyadh played a pivotal role in facilitating a major arms deal between Sudan and Pakistan that included drones and fighter aircraft valued at $1.5 billion.
Observers describe the deal as a “practical response” to the logistical support the Rapid Support Forces are said to receive from the UAE. The aim, they say, is to give the Sudanese army air superiority that could decide battles without Saudi or Egyptian aircraft having to fly over Sudanese territory.
Despite the clarity of the objective, Egyptian and Saudi moves remain constrained by sensitive calculations. Amani al-Tawil, an adviser at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said that “Egypt avoids any overt military role to prevent slipping into an open regional war that could drain its resources.”
Saudi Arabia, too, is factoring in geography. Tareq bin Sheikhan al-Shammari, head of the Arab International Relations Council, said that “Riyadh will not repeat the Yemen scenario on land with which it has no direct land border,” and instead prefers to use its “diplomatic weight” by pressuring allies.
In Washington, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have begun a campaign to clarify their view of the conflict to the U.S. administration. According to Ben Fishman, a researcher at The Washington Institute, Riyadh is seeking to portray the UAE as a “destabilizing” actor through its support for armed militias, while presenting Saudi Arabia as a “responsible” party backing state institutions.
Fishman said the Rapid Support Forces “will lose their combat capability as soon as Emirati logistical support stops—something Saudi diplomacy is now trying to achieve.”
Against that backdrop, the confrontation between the Cairo-Riyadh axis and the Emirati axis in Sudan may take the form of a war of attrition: relying on advanced arms supplies to the Sudanese army to ensure battlefield superiority, imposing diplomatic isolation on the Rapid Support Forces in international forums, and applying economic pressure to raise the cost of the support Abu Dhabi provides.
