Ignore the political noise accompanying Secretary of State Pompeo’s Mideast trip. Watch Khartoum instead.

The Sudanese capital is the most intriguing leg of Mr. Pompeo’s swing through the region. The press will focus on legal niceties involving an address to the Republican convention, recorded Monday on the roof of Jerusalem’s King David hotel. Yet, by making, on Tuesday, the first known direct flight from Israel to Sudan, once one of the most rogue of rogue states, Mr. Pompeo may well culminate a diplomatic coup.

Will Sudan join a quiet but significant political trend in the Middle East and Africa, where wide-spread yearning for modernity threatens traditional Soviet-inspired revolutionary ideology, strong-arm rule, and Islamism? Will it be next to establish relations with Israel? Will it be removed from America’s list of terror-sponsoring states?

Or will Sudan become prey to China, which competes with America in the region?

Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan’s strongman from 1989 to last spring, might follow Mr. Pompeo’s visit from his current residence at Khartoum Kobar prison. He’s been incarcerated there since last year, after a Sudanes court conviction on corruption-related charges. That jail cell is quite a spot for a former strongman long wanted by a hapless international justice system.

In 2008 the International Criminal Court at The Hague issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir, charging him with orchestrating the mass murder in Darfur. Sudan’s heavy handed war against an ethnic minority in the western part of the country was defined by some as genocide and made the country a global pariah.

Or did it?

Al Bashir, a record holder as the longest-serving president of the Arab League, kept popping up in world capitals. Rather than arresting him, as The Hague sought, leaders as far flung as Moscow and Pretoria feted their Sudanese guest and treated him as a head of state.

In the end, the military coup that ended al-Bashir’s 30 year reign of terror had little to do with the well-documented Darfur atrocities. Instead, he was overthrown in June 2019 after the Sudanese, sick of his self-enrichment and cavalier attitude toward them, took to the streets in large scale protests. The military saw the writing on the wall.

Since the coup, Sudan has been ruled by a hybrid military-civilian council. The new government is far from well-organized as generals and civilian leaders, including Islamist zealots, at times pull in opposite directions. The country is in flux.

In February, the general currently heading the council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, secretly met with Prime Minister Netanyahu at Uganda. After the Israeli press widely reported on the meeting, it was disavowed by the general’s civilian counterpart, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

The country’s military has long maintained clandestine ties with the Israelis and, even before the United Arab Emirates made the move, Khartoum’s new rulers seemed like natural candidates to formalize relations with Jerusalem.

Sure enough, soon after the UAE announced its intention to do just that, a Sudanese official all but confirmed that Sudan’s next.

A spokesman for the Sudanese foreign ministry, Haidar Badawi Sadiq, told Sky News Arabic that his country was ready to make the move. “It’s a matter of time, we are finalizing everything,” an unnamed official told the Associated press at the time. “The Emirati move encouraged us and helped calm some voices within the government who were afraid of backlash from the Sudanese public.”

On verra. One day after making that sentiment public, Mr. Sadiq was unceremoniously fired for speaking out of turn. In several appearances afterward, including for Israeli broadcaster Kan, Mr. Sadiq expressed no regret over spilling the beans on the badly-kept secret. Talks at the highest levels of Sudan following the UAE are still on, he insisted.

That’s why adding Khartoum to Mr. Pompeo’s itinerary is so intriguing.

True, on Tuesday the premier, Mr. Hamdok, said that the current government has no authority to make peace with Israel before an election. Yet, as American and Israeli officials broadly hint that the UAE will be joined by others, Sudan keeps popping up as top candidate. Its location on the shores of the Red Sea would certainly make it a strategic ally for Israel and America.

Sudan, meanwhile, is desperate for foreign aid and Western investment. To start getting that, it needs to be off the State Department’s terror list, where it was placed in 1993 for harboring top terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. Several America-based terror-related lawsuits against Sudan remain pending, while others have been resolved.

Delisting in respect of terrorism goes beyond technicalities. It’s a political issue with wider implication than ties with Israel. As everywhere else in the world, China’s influence in the Middle East is growing. Unless America competes in this new Cold War-like struggle, countries like Sudan will fall under Beijing’s spell.

The Khartoum visit is a good opportunity for Mr. Pompeo to declare Washington’s intentions to make Sudan, once a cruel terrorist state, into an American ally. Delisting and relations with Israel can mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Twitter @bennyavni