A decade after U.S. troops returned to Iraq to fight the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate, Washington, D.C., and Baghdad are nearing the end of monthslong negotiations on a U.S. military withdrawal. According to a Sept. 6 Reuters report, U.S. and Iraqi defense officials have come to a preliminary arrangement in which U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq will withdraw by the end of 2026, with the first few hundred troops to make their way out by September 2025.
The news comes days after U.S. special operations forces teamed up with Iraqi army commandos to flush out ISIS militants in the mountainous far-Western Iraq, where a senior ISIS figure was the primary target. Seven Americans were wounded in the operation, one of 250 joint missions Washington and Baghdad have executed together since October.
As expected, rumors of an impending U.S. drawdown are getting Beltway foreign policy analysts nervous. The Hudson Institute‘s Luke Coffey wrote that leaving Iraq in the rearview mirror is ill-advised since the Iraqi army still isn’t up to its full capabilities.
“[ISIS] is hard to keep down—a task made all the more difficult if the United States winds up removing its remaining troops from Syria and Iraq prematurely,” said the Washington Post‘s Max Boot, agreeing with Coffey.
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