Egypt is looking more and more like the third wheel on a date between Sudan and Saudi Arabia. After US President Barack Obama agreed Jan. 13 to lift some financial sanctions imposed on Sudan, that country's president, Omar al-Bashir, immediately visited Saudi Arabia. Sudanese officials said the Saudis played an important role in getting the trade sanctions lifted.

“We have enjoyed Saudi support in this regard, and [Saudi] King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz [Al Saud] pledged to President Bashir to continue his efforts to lift all the sanctions imposed on Sudan and remove the country from the list of state sponsors of terrorism,” Sudanese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Abdul Basit Badawi al-Sanosi told Al-Monitor recently. 

The United States imposed sanctions on Sudan in 1997 after the latter was accused of supporting armed Islamist groups, committing human rights abuses against minority groups in Darfur and dealing with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who lived there between 1992 and 1996. It will take six months for Obama's changes to fully take effect, and the new administration of Donald Trump has yet to indicate its assessment of them. Other US political and economic sanctions against Sudan remain in place.

Sanosi said the change in US policy was the fruit of long discussions involving Saudi Arabia's and Sudan’s cooperation in the fight against terrorism. Sanosi, who was with Bashir in Medina, Saudi Arabia, pointed out that the US step is a green light for the Gulf states and the rest of the world to deal with Sudan at all economic levels. “It would be better for those countries to deal more enthusiastically with my country moving forward,” he said.