The Trump administration sought to move the transitional government to normalise Israel–Sudan relations by concluding a formal peace deal. It also offered to remove Sudan from its list of state-sponsors of terrorism in return for 335 million US dollars in compensation to families of victims of the 1998 United States embassy bombings by al-Qaida, which the US government alleged the previous Sudanese regime played a role in. For the Sudanese transitional government, it was important to receive financial aid and open up trade opportunities in the midst of several ongoing crises, including decades of economic mismanagement under Bashir's regime, an unfinished internal peace process, recent political upheaval and the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving millions of Sudanese in hardship as food and fuel prices had soared. Therefore, in mid-October 2020, it agreed to pay the compensation and distanced itself from the pro-terrorist activities of the Bashir regime in order to lift the anti-terrorist sanctions imposed in 1993 and obtain access to foreign loans and recover the economy. Separately, Sudan had already been conducting negotiations for peace with Israel, and by mid-October had agreed to allow flights to Israel to overfly its territory.