U.S. soldiers with the 630th Ordnance Company, assisted by French troops, conduct a controlled detonation at al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Dec. 29, 2023. (Quince Lanford/U.S. Army)
WASHINGTON — U.S. troops will remain in Iraq as the two countries agree to a two-phased transition of the American-led mission to defeat the Islamic State, U.S. officials said Friday.
“To be clear, the United States is not withdrawing from Iraq,” a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told reporters. “This announcement comes after a decade of success from extraordinary international cooperation between coalition partners, Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military in territorially defeating ISIS in the core regions of Iraq and Syria.”
The first phase will conclude the anti-ISIS coalition’s military mission in Iraq and end the deployment of coalition forces in certain locations in Iraq by September 2025, the U.S. official said. Officials did not say how many troops will remain in Iraq or where they will be stationed.
“We’re not going to speak to our plans concerning specific base locations or troop numbers,” said a defense official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “For now, that remains in a planning process and under review.”
But U.S. and Iraq officials have agreed to allow coalition troops to continue to support anti-ISIS operations in Syria from Iraq through the second phase of the transition until at least September 2026.
For 10 years, U.S.-led coalition forces have battled ISIS, since the terrorist group launched a blitzkrieg across eastern Syria and into Iraq, capturing massive swaths of both countries, including about one-third of Iraq. Then-President Barack Obama amassed the coalition to launch an air campaign against ISIS. Later that year, the U.S. began sending forces back into Iraq to train and advise Iraqi military forces to fight off the group. That campaign has continued, despite ISIS fighters having lost almost all their land in Iraq by 2017.
The U.S. declared an end to its combat portion of the anti-ISIS mission in 2021 but retained about 2,500 troops in Iraq, saying they would remain indefinitely in a support role. There are also about 900 troops in Syria.
A defense official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said “we’re not going to speak to our plans concerning specific base locations or troop numbers.”
Iraqi Defence Minister Thabet al-Abbassi earlier this month told Saudi news channel Al-Hadath that the coalition would pull out from bases in Baghdad and other parts of federal Iraq by September 2025 and from the autonomous northern Kurdistan region by September 2026, Agence France-Presse reported. He also said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had said in a meeting that “two years were not enough” to carry out the withdrawal.
“The justifications are no longer there,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said Sept. 15 in an interview with Bloomberg. “There is no need for a coalition. We have moved on from wars to stability. ISIS is not really representing a challenge.”
The two countries agreed to form a Higher Military Commission last August for discussions about the U.S.-led military coalition’s next phase in its mission to defeat ISIS. The U.S. and Iraq began formal conversations in January about ending the coalition.
A defense official at the time said the High Military Commission meeting was not a negotiation about the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
U.S. bases in the region have been prone to attacks. After the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on Israel, Iran-linked groups launched some 175 rocket and drone strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
The announcement follows a recent increase of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon as fighting in the Middle East continues to intensify.
The U.S. has expanded its forces in the region in the last several months to help defend Israel, as well as protect American and allied personnel and assets.
