When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to Sudan last month, the first top-level U.S. visit in 15 years, the main item on his agenda wasn’t Sudan, sanctions, or the country’s transition to democracy after decades of dictatorship. It was Israel, according to an account by three people briefed on the visit.
During a private meeting to hammer out details of a deal to remove Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, Pompeo abruptly prodded Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to place a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and kickstart the normalization of relations between the two countries. The gesture, Pompeo said, would make it easier for him to convince Congress to remove Sudan from the terror list. “Everybody on the Sudanese side’s mouths just dropped to the floor,” said one person familiar with the meeting.
