Dr. Marwa Saeed: The Arrest of Shamim Mafi Opens the File on Prohibited Weapons .. and the Entanglements Between Iran and the Sudanese Army Return to the International Spotlight
Dr. Marwa Saeed
In a dangerous development that has shaken international political and security circles, U.S. authorities arrested an Iranian citizen named Shamim Mafi at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of involvement in complex arms deals between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Sudanese army through Turkish mediation. This arrest was not merely passing news; rather, it came to confirm what intelligence reports and repeated political analyses had indicated regarding the nature of the ties between these parties, and it brings back to the forefront the issue of the United States classifying the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Movement in Sudan (the Kizan) as terrorist organizations.
According to the U.S. allegations, Shamim Mafi, 44 years old, played the role of the principal intermediary in arms deals worth millions of dollars. These included the sale of Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones, along with bombs, detonating fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition for the benefit of the Sudanese army. Some reports indicate that Turkey was a transit point for these shipments, adding a more complex regional dimension to this network. These deals, carried out away from international oversight, reveal Iranian attempts to enhance its influence in the region by supporting military actors. At the same time, they raise questions about the Sudanese army obtaining weapons and ammunition, including weapons and materials internationally prohibited for use in its wars and conflicts, which have now extended and transformed from an internal threat into a regional and international threat through groups of an extremist Islamist nature. This raises serious concerns and questions, especially in light of the army’s evasion of its obligations related to preserving international peace and security.
The leadership of the Sudanese army, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has long denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood or the Sudanese Islamic Movement. However, this denial contradicts reality, as we see today a number of battalions affiliated with the Brotherhood fighting alongside the Sudanese army, while media outlets are filled with dozens of statements from their leaders. They even march side by side with the army’s own leadership, especially the Al-Baraa bin Malik Battalion, which is classified as terrorist and whose commander was subject to international sanctions prior to the classification decision. This comes in the context of the United States classifying the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Movement in Sudan as terrorist organizations, a classification based in part on their links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in addition to other organizations classified as terrorist such as Hamas, ISIS, the Somali Al-Shabaab movement, and Boko Haram.
The arrest of Mafi, and what the investigations revealed regarding the nature of the deals and the parties involved, provides new material evidence of these connections. If Iran, through the Revolutionary Guard, is supporting the Sudanese army with weapons, then this strengthens the hypothesis that there are common grounds and intersecting interests between these parties that go beyond official rhetoric. What the Shamim Mafi case has revealed is nothing more than confirmation of a reality understood by many inside and outside Sudan: that the Sudanese army under its current leadership is the other face of the Islamic Movement.
A deeper look into the history of the current Sudanese military leadership – including al-Burhan, Kabashi, Yasser al-Atta, and others – reveals that the majority of them were and still are cadres and prominent leaders within the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Movement in Sudan. This connection is not new but goes back decades. After the 1989 coup that brought the Islamic Movement to power, the movement dismissed and purged hundreds of officers who did not belong to it in a large-scale cleansing operation. This purge reached its peak in the massacre of the “Martyrs of 28 Ramadan” in 1990, when dozens of brave officers who refused to submit to the rule of the Islamic Movement were executed. This painful incident remains deeply embedded in the memory of the Sudanese people and confirms that ideological loyalty was, and still is, a fundamental criterion in the structure of the Sudanese army under the control of the Islamic Movement.
The arrest of Shamim Mafi places the Sudanese army in an embarrassing position before the international community and increases pressure on it to disclose the nature of its relations with Iran and the Revolutionary Guard. It also reinforces doubts about the extent of the independence of military decision-making in Sudan from the ideological influence of the Islamic Movement. On the regional and international levels, these developments may lead to stricter sanctions on the parties involved and deepen Sudan’s isolation at a time when it is in dire need of international support to emerge from its successive crises.
The exposure of this complex network of arms deals and ideological ties calls for a comprehensive reassessment of the situation in Sudan and the necessity of working to build a professional national army far removed from political and ideological polarization in order to guarantee the stability of Sudan and the region as a whole.
