Over the past weekend, two leading U.S. news outlets, The New York Times and The Washington Post, published details from a confidential evidence dossier that accuses Sudan’s ruling Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of developing and deploying chemical weapons amid its ongoing two-year civil conflict with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group. According to initial reports, the dossier was provided to media by an unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence agency, and it comprises more than 150 pages of materials, including visual evidence, intercepted communications between senior SAF officers, bomb design blueprints, audio recordings, and thousands of text messages pulled directly from the mobile devices of top military commanders. Multiple independent sources speaking to Middle East Eye (MEE) have since confirmed that the intelligence agency in question is Israel’s Mossad, and that the document shared with major U.S. media matches nearly identically a dossier Israel handed over to the U.S. government ahead of Washington’s January 2025 sanctions on SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
The dossier outlines that the SAF launched a six-month secret chemical weapons program in 2024, led by a covert military unit within the force, amid a worsening battlefield situation that saw the RSF seize control of most of Sudan’s capital Khartoum by mid-year. According to the intercepted communications laid out in the document, senior SAF General Tariq Hussain, identified as the head of the initiative, proposed repurposed chlorine gas as a low-cost, accessible weapon to gain a tactical edge in battle for the capital. The dossier claims that from July 2024, a hidden facility assembled prototype chlorine bombs, using repurposed civilian barbecue canisters and liquefied gas tanks, with initial testing conducted in remote desert regions of Sudan. Unlike internationally banned chemical warfare agents such as sarin, chlorine is not classified as a controlled substance under global non-proliferation frameworks. The documents also note that 20 large chlorine cylinders were imported into Sudan from Egypt, a known backer of the SAF throughout the civil war.
A former senior U.S. official familiar with the dossier described the large-scale interception of officer communications as a striking demonstration of the capabilities of Pegasus, the controversial Israeli spyware developed by NSO Group that enables full remote infiltration of smartphone devices. A senior anonymous Sudanese security analyst told MEE that while it was widely understood that Israel maintained strategic intelligence interests in Sudan, the scale, depth and duration of the surveillance operation detailed in the dossier reveals a far deeper level of Israeli engagement in the country than previously acknowledged publicly. Both the Israeli government and foreign ministry have been contacted by MEE for comment on the origins of the dossier, but no response has been issued as of publication. The Sudanese army-backed national government has issued a full, vehement denial of all chemical weapons allegations.
Sudan’s ongoing civil war erupted in April 2023 following a bitter power split between the SAF, led by Burhan, and the RSF, a former state-aligned paramilitary group commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The two factions had previously joined forces to carry out a 2021 coup that ousted the civilian interim government established after the 2019 revolution that toppled longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir, but competing claims to power and divergent networks of financial and military influence ultimately pushed the country into full-scale conflict. The RSF has received extensive backing from the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s closest regional ally, while Egypt and most recently a coalition of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have publicly supported the SAF.
The dossier notes that internal SAF communications reveal debate among top leadership over whether to move forward with the chlorine bomb program: while senior officials formally agreed to abandon the project, a small clique of officers continued development in secret, according to a former U.S. official. In September 2024, the RSF issued a public statement accusing the SAF of launching toxic missile strikes on the strategic al-Jaili oil refinery north of Khartoum, which was under RSF control at the time. A subsequent intercepted message from General Hussain referenced that “they drank the gas,” referencing RSF fighters being exposed to chlorine during the attack. However, the dossier contains no confirmed records of fatalities from the attack, no other verified instances of chlorine bombs being deployed in combat, and no medical evidence or victim testimony to corroborate the use of chemical weapons.
In an official response to MEE, the Sudanese government emphasized that it is a signatory state to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and has remained fully compliant with all convention requirements, including commitments to forgo the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. The government added that all chlorine supplies within Sudan’s borders are exclusively earmarked for civilian uses including water purification, industrial production and energy generation, and that the country is willing to open its facilities to inspection by any competent international verification body. It also noted that after the allegations first emerged, Sudan implemented a series of cooperative measures in coordination with the United States, but that Washington has never produced concrete evidence to back up the claims. It should be noted that the RSF itself has been formally accused by both the United Nations and United States of perpetrating genocide against civilian populations in the Darfur region, with eyewitness accounts documenting widespread mass executions, sexual violence and looting carried out by RSF fighters.
The revelation that the evidence dossier originated from Israeli intelligence has sparked new questions about Israel’s covert alignment in Sudan’s civil war, confirming reporting by multiple independent sources that Israel has shifted its support to the RSF, whose primary patron is the UAE. Israeli officials have previously claimed that Israel maintains neutral relations with multiple factions in Sudan, but regional analysts point to a long-building relationship between Israel and Hemedti that deepened starting in 2021. Sudan first moved toward normalizing relations with Israel after the 2019 overthrow of al-Bashir, with Burhan meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2020 and signing the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords that same year, though normalization has never been finalized. Ahead of the 2023 outbreak of war, then-Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen held a high-profile meeting with Burhan to finalize the normalization deal, but the war derailed those plans. Throughout the conflict, Hemedti has maintained close ties to Israeli intelligence, while the UAE has continued its backing of the RSF – support that Abu Dhabi continues to deny despite mounting evidence from the UN and independent investigators.
Recent reporting from Africa Intelligence revealed that two of Hemedti’s brothers made secret trips to Tel Aviv in May 2025 and again earlier this year to hold meetings with senior Israeli intelligence and foreign ministry officials. One regional analyst noted that the timed release of the chemical weapons dossier closely follows the recent signing of the Mecca Agreement, a defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan that explicitly reaffirms the bloc’s support for the SAF. The release of the dossier, the analyst argued, represents a show of influence from the Abraham Accords bloc in response to the pro-SAF Mecca Agreement, with the leaked intelligence successfully pushing the U.S. to impose sanctions on Burhan and the SAF leadership. As one former U.S. official put it, “The intelligence they shared with Washington succeeded in getting Burhan and the SAF sanctioned,” adding that the strategic alliance between Israel and the UAE has only deepened amid the Sudan conflict.