Daily Briefing: Ethiopia’s War Escalates, Sudan Presses the UN, and Iran’s Hormuz Leverage Slips

Nexa Insight · Daily Briefing

Horn of Africa, Sudan and the Strait of Hormuz

I. Horn of Africa

Pro-government forces said they had captured the strategic Tigrayan town of Alamata as Ethiopia’s renewed civil conflict entered its second week, while Sudan’s foreign minister used the UN General Assembly to demand pressure on the RSF’s foreign backers after Washington again denied Gen. al-Burhan a visa to attend in person.

1. The pro-government Tigrai Peace Force posted video on Sunday showing fighters marching through Alamata waving Ethiopian flags, a town serving as a key supply hub near Tigray’s southern border with Amhara and on the road toward the regional capital, Mekelle, 120km to the north. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the footage; two diplomatic sources told the agency the town had fallen, while a third said pro-government forces had entered but full control remained unclear. Neither the Ethiopian military nor the Tigray People’s Liberation Front responded to requests for comment. (Sources: Reuters, via CNBC Africa and U.S. News; Ethiopia Observer)
2. Afar’s regional governor alleged that Eritrean forces now control roughly two-thirds of the region and are directly participating in the fighting alongside the Tigray-led rebel alliance; Eritrea has not responded to the allegation. Roughly 150,000 people have been displaced since the offensive began on 20 September, according to the co-founder of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association. The Eritrean-troop allegation is unconfirmed and denied by no independent source; treat it as a regional official’s claim. (Sources: Al Jazeera; The Soufan Center)
3. Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Mohieldin Salim Ahmed Ibrahim, addressed the 81st UN General Assembly on Sunday in place of Sovereign Council chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, whose U.S. visa was again withheld. Salim said “silence regarding the atrocities committed by the terrorist militia in Sudan is not only shameful, unethical and complicit, it is a betrayal of the civilian victims,” and demanded the international community block “cross-border channels” supplying the RSF with weapons and mercenaries, without naming specific countries in the remarks reported by UN News, Radio Tamazuj and Arab News. Sudan Tribune separately reported, single-sourced, that Salim named Ethiopia and Chad specifically as conduits for RSF drones and arms — a detail not corroborated by the other outlets’ accounts of the same speech. (Sources: UN News; Radio Tamazuj; Arab News; Sudan Tribune)

Elsewhere in the Horn: South Sudan’s Special Court ruled today, 30 September, on the security-threat concerns that had twice delayed Riek Machar’s treason trial — Judge James Alala Deng ordered the immediate removal of court police and security personnel named in the threat investigation, directed enhanced protection for the accused and defence lawyers in transit, and adjourned the case to 2 October, when the court is expected to rule on the underlying defence and prosecution applications. (Sources: Eye Radio; Radio Tamazuj) This briefing found no significant new verified developments on Somalia’s AUSSOM mission, Somaliland, or Djibouti’s refugee response since our last edition.

II. Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s main pipeline around the Strait of Hormuz returned to full export volumes, undercutting Iran’s chief remaining leverage in stalled ceasefire talks, as Washington’s UN envoy dismissed Tehran’s latest truce terms as a “cynical” ploy and an Israeli strike killed a senior Hamas commander in Gaza.

1. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which can carry roughly 4 million barrels a day — about 4% of global supply — around the Strait of Hormuz, resumed full exports by 28 September after a mid-September drone attack had forced its closure and a partial, low-rate restart on 22 September. Brent crude fell more than $2 a barrel to its lowest level since 8 September when the initial restart was announced. (Sources: Bloomberg and Al Arabiya, via reporting reviewed by this briefing; Hydrocarbon Processing; U.S. News)
2. Shipping-data trackers reported this week that Middle East crude exports have climbed to their highest level since the war began in February, with tanker traffic through Hormuz itself rebounding sharply as Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura terminal ramped shipments back up; outlets differed on the precise barrels-per-day figure, but agreed exports remain meaningfully below February’s pre-war peak. An Al Jazeera analysis published today noted Iran’s economy has kept contracting through the recovery — GDP down 10.1% year-on-year in the March–June quarter, annual inflation near 70%, and the rial trading beyond 2.2 million to the dollar — evidence, this briefing assesses, that the physical reopening of trade has not yet translated into leverage for Tehran at the negotiating table. (Sources: Al Jazeera; Baird Maritime; Reuters/Iran International)
3. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz dismissed Iran’s latest ceasefire proposal as “a pretty cynical attempt to put something on the table that they knew was unacceptable,” saying Tehran had demanded “the release of the blockades, the sanctions” and access to billions in frozen assets before further talks. President Trump said separately that talks with Iran would “likely resume this week,” but Iran’s own UN delegation told IRNA there was “no plan for a new round of negotiations” and that its foreign minister was returning home. The two sides’ accounts of whether talks will resume are directly contradictory and unresolved as of publication. (Sources: The Times of Israel; NBC News; The Hill)
4. The World Health Organization said more than 800 people have been killed in two months of renewed fighting between Iran-backed Houthi forces and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government, with thousands more injured or displaced. (Sources: Oman Observer; Mwakilishi, citing WHO)
5. Israeli forces killed Izz al-Din al-Beik, commander of Hamas’s North Gaza Brigade, in a strike on Gaza City on Monday; Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz both confirmed the targeting. (Sources: Al Jazeera; The Times of Israel; NBC News)
6. Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, pressed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at UN General Assembly sidelines meetings to advance the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement, stressing the need for an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s disarmament. (Sources: Arab News; The Times of Israel; Naharnet)

Elsewhere in the region: Syria’s state petroleum company blamed a fire on a gas pipeline between Al-Shola and Deir al-Zour on sabotage; this attribution is single-sourced to the state company and has not been independently confirmed. Israeli media reported that Saudi and other Arab officials also attended the previously undisclosed Netanyahu–bin Zayed meetings in Abu Dhabi noted in our last edition; this addition is single-sourced to Israeli media and unconfirmed by Emirati or Saudi officials.

III. The Great Powers

Washington paired continued pressure on Tehran with a narrow humanitarian exception, even as Gulf infrastructure — not great-power diplomacy — did the most this week to blunt Iran’s remaining leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.

1. The Trump administration will grant a one-month sanctions waiver for flights carrying Shi’ite pilgrims between Iran and Najaf, Iraq, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, a narrow humanitarian exception amid otherwise unrelenting sanctions pressure on Tehran. (Sources: Reuters, via U.S. News and Arab News)
2. Ambassador Waltz’s public rejection of Iran’s ceasefire terms (see Section II) underlines that Washington continues to link any Hormuz settlement to nuclear concessions rather than blockade relief on its own — a position Saudi Arabia’s pipeline restart now makes easier for the U.S. to hold. (Source: The Times of Israel)

Elsewhere among the powers: this briefing found no significant new verified movement from Russia or China on either the Iran war or the Horn of Africa portfolio since our last edition.

Abdinasir Hassan Timoweyne is Chairperson of the Nexa Research and Training Centre and a political analyst specialising in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. He lectures in International Relations at New Generation University.