At a meeting on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Azerbaijan last month, Sudan’s acting foreign minister and his Iranian counterpart discussed restoring ties “as soon as possible.”

The meeting was not surprising. Prospects for a rapprochement between former partners Khartoum and Tehran have been brightening after the downfall of longtime Sudanese ex-president Omar Al-Bashir (1993-2019). Moreover, the Iranian-Saudi agreement in March to normalize ties has enabled Tehran to make progress on mending fences with a host of Sunni-led Arab states which, at least until recently, were under Saudi pressure to maintain a rigid anti-Iranian posture.

Historical context

Understanding the current Tehran-Khartoum relationship requires taking stock of the past. In the decade that followed Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, bilateral ties were negative due to Sudanese support for Baghdad during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. That trajectory changed in 1989. The bloodless Islamist-backed military coup in Sudan that year took ideological inspiration from...