Aafter negotiating for most of the year, US and Iraqi officials finally reached an agreement on Friday about the US presence in Iraq – something that is long overdue.
Although American officials insist that Washington will not withdraw all 2,500 troops from the country and hesitate to use the word “withdrawal,” the US will be reducing its deployment over the next two years. According to a two-phase plan unveiled on September 27, the US-backed campaign against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq will officially end in September 2025 and withdraw US troops from some bases in the country. In the second phase, Iraq agreed to allow the US military to continue using Iraq to support ongoing operations against IS in neighboring Syria, where there are 900 American troops, until 2026, the Associated Press reported.
The announcement is likely to appease those in the national security establishment—lawmakers, analysts, and former generals—who have always worried about a complete US withdrawal and are quick to say it would be harmful to US interests. Earlier this month, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers wrote in X, “Withdrawing from Iraq in this way will benefit and strengthen Iran and ISIS. I am deeply concerned about the impact a decision like this would have on our national security.” Retired General Joseph Votel, former commander of US forces in the Middle East, also said that the departure of the US will cause IS to rise again as it seeks to fill the remaining void.
But these keys are not subject to scrutiny. The US needs a clean break, not a conditional transition that could extend its career for years to come. (The Biden Administration has declined to provide details on how many US troops will remain in Iraq.)
First, it is important to note that the US has already achieved its objectives against IS in Iraq. From the moment the Obama Administration put together a large coalition and began hitting IS positions in September 2014, the US mission was clear and measurable: eliminate IS’ territorial caliphate, which at its height was as large as Britain, which included about 8 million people, and earned about $1 million a day from selling oil on the black market. IS was the most dedicated competitor at the time and is one of the richest terrorist organizations in history, boasting tens of thousands of fighters from more than 80 countries.
IS, however, always had a fundamental weakness: it had no friends, let alone allies, and alienated everyone in its path. The party’s complete disloyalty to the local people and its desire to take over the government ultimately destroyed it. The West, with the US leading the way, views IS as a magnet for jihadists who want to attack its own people. Minorities like the Kurds and Yezidis see IS as a group of messianic, bloodthirsty oppressors who want to wipe out their communities. And the states with the most intense geopolitical rivalries—Iran, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the Gulf states to name a few—all agreed that destroying IS was in their best interest.
The results speak for themselves. Through an intensive three-year program of US bombing, combined with a heavy-handed campaign involving everyone from US special forces and the Iraqi army to Kurdish peshmerga and Iranian-backed Shia militias, IS’s advance was halted and reversed. In December 2017, the government of Iraq announced that IS’s caliphate is a historical place (the same announcement was made in Syria about 15 months later). The caliphate remains complete to this day, so much so that the top US official participated in a memorial service earlier this year marking the 5th anniversary of its defeat.
Many in the Beltway argue that just because IS’ local caliphate is gone, that doesn’t mean the threat is over. This is a legitimate concern; It is reported that IS is on track to double the number of attacks on people in Iraq and Syria compared to last year.
Yet to think that every effort to fight IS will expose the US military is not to leave all other local actors out of the agency. The Iraqi government, the Turks, the Russians, and the despicable Assad regime continue to have an interest in ensuring that IS does not rebuild its empire. Their military capabilities against IS are better today than when the operation began ten years ago. The Iraqi army has a better ability to plan, organize, and conduct independent operations against IS fighters on the edge of the country than before. The same can be said about the peshmerga, according to the Inspector General of the Ministry of Defense of the counter-IS mission, they have improved the organization of missions and counterinsurgency operations in their area of responsibility.
The US will still have options even when the military is fully withdrawn. The US intelligence community will remain focused on the group and will not hesitate to take action should an imminent plot or high-level terrorist rear its head. The US has proven that it can do both without a presence on the ground. In August 2022, a year after the US withdrew from Afghanistan, Washington killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike. This January, the US warned Iran about a pending attack by IS that finally materialized. In March, the US did the same with Russia, sharing clear intelligence about an IS plot in Moscow that the Russians unfortunately failed to stop.
Is the IS down and out completely? No, but that’s the wrong question. The right question is whether US interests are best served by staying in Iraq indefinitely, especially if doing so presents many security problems.
The US presence on the ground is a gift to Iran and its allied forces in the Middle East. That’s because the presence of US bases in foreign countries gives them a rallying call and a nearby target; US troops have been targeted more than 200 times since October in large part because of Washington’s support for Israel. One of these attacks, in late January, killed three American servicemen in a small area of Jordan, near its borders with Iraq and Syria.
President Biden retaliated by striking dozens of troops and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions in Iraq and Syria. However, rocket attacks resumed in July, and in August, five American soldiers were injured when two rockets hit the al-Asad air base. The US, in other words, is taking unnecessary risks for a goal that was achieved years ago.
The Biden Administration has set the stage for a normal, business-like relationship with the Iraqi government. The big question, which has yet to be decided, is whether the next President will finally realize that the US has achieved everything it can do in Iraq. And if so, when?
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