Sudan’s Year-Old War: The Build-up and the Turmoil 

A boy holds bullet cartridges as clashes between Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army continue, in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 13, 2023.  (Reuters)
A boy holds bullet cartridges as clashes between Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army continue, in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 13, 2023. (Reuters)
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Sudan’s Year-Old War: The Build-up and the Turmoil 

A boy holds bullet cartridges as clashes between Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army continue, in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 13, 2023.  (Reuters)
A boy holds bullet cartridges as clashes between Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army continue, in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 13, 2023. (Reuters)

Sudan is now a year into a war between rival military factions that has killed thousands, forced millions to flee and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

Below is a timeline of the events that led up to the conflict and the turmoil that followed:

THE BUILD-UP

Dec. 19, 2018 - Hundreds protest in the northern city of Atbara against soaring bread prices. Demonstrations spurred by a broader economic crisis soon spread to Khartoum and other cities. Security services respond with tear gas and gunfire.

April 6, 2019 - Hundreds of thousands begin a sit-in outside army headquarters in Khartoum. Five days later the army overthrows and detains President Omar al-Bashir, ending his three-decade rule.

Aug. 17, 2019 - After a deadly raid on the sit-in at army headquarters in June causes outrage, the military and civilian groups sign a deal to share power during a transitional period leading to elections. Abdalla Hamdok, an economist and former UN official, is later appointed to head a government.

Oct. 25, 2021 - Security forces detain Hamdok and other top civilians in pre-dawn raids, following recriminations between civilian and military factions and a failed coup attempt. Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan says the civilian government has been dissolved.

Nov. 21, 2021 - After several rallies against the coup and the suspension of most international financial support for Sudan, military leaders and Hamdok announce a deal for his reinstatement as prime minister. He resigns less than two months later.

Dec. 5, 2022 - Civilian groups sign an initial deal with the military to start a new, two-year political transition and appoint a civilian government.

April 5, 2023 - The signing of a final deal is delayed for a second time amid disputes over whether the army would be placed under civilian oversight and over plans for the integration of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) into the army.

THE TURMOIL

April 13, 2023 - Sudan's army says mobilization by the RSF risks confrontation. Two days later, battles break out between the two forces in Khartoum and other cities.

April 21, 2023 - The number of residents fleeing Khartoum accelerates as army air strikes, clashes and looting hit the capital. Diplomats and expatriates rush to airstrips, borders and other evacuation points in the days and weeks that follow.

May 20, 2023 - At talks in Jeddah, the warring factions agree to a seven-day ceasefire, but fighting barely pauses. The US-Saudi brokered negotiations are the first of several failed international attempts to settle the conflict.

July 2023 - Violence spreads in the strife-torn western region of Darfur, where the RSF makes further advances in the following months.

Dec. 14, 2023 - Families in conflict zones could experience famine-like conditions in 2024, the UN warns. Some 30 million, almost two-thirds of the population, need help, double the number before the war. Humanitarian alerts mount in the following months.

Dec. 19, 2023 - The army withdraws as the RSF advances to take Wad Madani, the capital of al-Gezira state. The RSF largely controls neighboring Khartoum, almost all of Darfur and much of Kordofan, while the army holds the north and east including Sudan's main Red Sea port. Both sides have committed abuses, the UN and the US say.

March 12, 2024 - The army says it has taken control of the state broadcaster's headquarters in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, part of its biggest advance against the RSF in months. Sources say Iranian-made drones are helping the army turn the tide.

April 9, 2024 - Fighting spreads to the up-to-now calm farming state of al-Gadaref, where almost half a million people have taken refuge.



Will Israel’s Interceptors Outlast Iran’s Missiles?

The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
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Will Israel’s Interceptors Outlast Iran’s Missiles?

The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Israel has a world-leading missile interception system but its bank of interceptors is finite. Now, as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them.

On Thursday, The New York Times reporters spoke to current and former Israeli officials about the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli air defense.

Aside from a potentially game-changing US intervention that shapes the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, two factors will help decide the length of the Israel-Iran war: Israel’s reserve of missile interceptors and Iran’s stock of long-range missiles.

Since Iran started retaliating against Israel’s fire last week, Israel’s world-leading air defense system has intercepted most incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, giving the Israeli Air Force more time to strike Iran without incurring major losses at home.

But now, as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them. That has raised questions within the Israeli security establishment about whether the country will run low on air defense missiles before Iran uses up its ballistic arsenal, according to eight current and former officials.

Already, Israel’s military has had to conserve its use of interceptors and is giving greater priority to the defense of densely populated areas and strategic infrastructure, according to the officials. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely.

Interceptors are “not grains of rice,” said Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, who commanded Israel’s air defense system until 2021 and still serves in the military reserve. “The number is finite.”

“If a missile is supposed to hit refineries in Haifa, it’s clear that it’s more important to intercept that missile than one that will hit the Negev desert,” General Kochav said.

Conserving Israel’s interceptors is “a challenge,” he added. “We can make it, but it’s a challenge.”

Asked for comment on the limits of its interceptor arsenal, the Israeli military said in a brief statement that it “is prepared and ready to handle any scenario and is operating defensively and offensively to remove threats to Israeli civilians.”

No Israeli official would divulge the number of interceptors left at Israel’s disposal; the revelation of such a closely guarded secret could give Iran a military advantage.

The answer will affect Israel’s ability to sustain a long-term, attritional war. The nature of the war will partly be decided by whether Trump decides to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear enrichment site at Fordo, in northern Iran, or whether Iran decides to give up its enrichment program to prevent such an intervention.

But the war’s endgame will also be shaped by how long both sides can sustain the damage to their economies, as well as the damage to national morale caused by a growing civilian death toll.

Israel relies on at least seven kinds of air defense. Most of them involve automated systems that use radar to detect incoming missiles and then provide officers with suggestions of how to intercept them.

Military officials have seconds to react to some short-range fire, but minutes to judge the response to long-range attacks. At times, the automated systems do not offer recommendations, leaving officers to make decisions on their own, General Kochav said.

The Arrow system intercepts long-range missiles at higher altitudes; the David’s Sling system intercepts them at lower altitudes; while the Iron Dome takes out shorter-range rockets, usually fired from Gaza, or the fragments of missiles already intercepted by other defense systems.

The United States has supplied at least two more defense systems, some of them fired from ships in the Mediterranean, and Israel is also trying out a new and relatively untested laser beam. Finally, fighter jets are deployed to shoot down slow-moving drones.

Some Israelis feel it is time to wrap up the war before Israel’s defenses are tested too severely.

At least 24 civilians have been killed by Iran’s strikes, and more than 800 have been injured. Some key infrastructure, including oil refineries in northern Israel, has been hit, along with civilian homes. A hospital in southern Israel was struck on Thursday morning.

Already high by Israeli standards, the death toll could rise sharply if the Israeli military is forced to limit its general use of interceptors in order to guarantee the long-term protection of a few strategic sites like the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel or the military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“Now that Israel has succeeded in striking most of its nuclear targets in Iran, Israel has a window of two or three days to declare the victory and end the war,” said Zohar Palti, a former senior officer in the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

“When planning how to defend Israel in future wars, no one envisaged a scenario in which we would be fighting on so many fronts and defending against so many rounds of ballistic missiles,” said Palti, who was for years involved in Israel’s defensive planning.

Others are confident that Israel will be able to solve the problem by destroying most of Iran’s missile launchers, preventing the Iranian military from using the stocks that it still has.

Iran has both fixed and mobile launchers, scattered across its territory, according to two Israeli officials. Some of its missiles are stored underground, where they are harder to destroy, while others are in aboveground caches, the officials said.

The Israeli military says it has destroyed more than a third of the launchers. Officials and experts say that has already limited the number of missiles that Iran can fire in a single attack.

US officials said Israel’s strikes against the launchers have decimated Iran’s ability to fire its missiles and hurt its ability to create large-scale barrages.

“The real issue is the number of launchers, more than the number of missiles,” said Asaf Cohen, a former Israeli commander who led the Iran department in Israel’s military intelligence directorate.

“The more of them that are hit, the harder it will be for them to launch barrages,” Cohen added. “If they realize they have a problem with launch capacity, they’ll shift to harassment: one or two missiles every so often, aimed at two different areas simultaneously.”

The New York Times