US military completes withdrawal from Iraq, ending 23-year presence

The United States military completed the withdrawal of its remaining forces from Iraq on Wednesday, closing out a 23-year chapter of American military engagement that began with the 2003 invasion and, in its final phase, spanned a 12-year campaign against the Islamic State group. Baghdad marked the moment with the start of a four-day national holiday it has named "Sovereignty Days."

The last American troops left an air base in the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, the final installation still hosting coalition forces after a two-year, phased drawdown that emptied bases across the rest of the country over the preceding year. The pullout fulfills a September 30 deadline that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and U.S. officials had repeatedly called "fixed and final," even as it leaves open questions about who fills the security vacuum it creates.

A withdrawal two years in the making

The timeline traces to a joint statement issued by Washington and Baghdad in September 2024, under President Joe Biden, which set out a two-phase conclusion of the U.S.-led coalition's military mission: bases in federal Iraqi territory by September 2025, and the remaining presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region by September 2026. President Donald Trump's administration carried the plan through largely unchanged, with Trump telling reporters over the summer that "we don't think we need the military there anymore."

Al-Zaidi, a 41-year-old businessman who became Iraq's youngest-ever prime minister when he took office in May, traveled to Washington in mid-July to lock in the timeline. He met Trump at the White House on July 14 and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent two days later; a Treasury Department readout of that meeting described the two governments reaffirming cooperation against Iran and support for Iraq's financial sector. The following month, Al-Zaidi rejected a proposal to keep some coalition forces in the country past the deadline, and Iraq declared the September 30 date final after a meeting between the prime minister and CENTCOM commander Gen. Brad Cooper.

The numbers behind two decades of war

At the height of the U.S. occupation in 2007, roughly 170,000 American troops were stationed in Iraq. Forces withdrew almost entirely in 2011 under President Barack Obama, then returned in 2014 after the Islamic State group seized nearly a third of the country's territory, including the city of Mosul. The mission that ended this week, Operation Inherent Resolve, dates to that 2014 return and lasted 12 years. By the time of Wednesday's departure, the coalition presence had shrunk to a few hundred troops concentrated in the Kurdish north.

More than 4,500 American service members died over the course of the various Iraq campaigns since 2003, and seven were killed in Iraq during this year's wider Iran conflict. The Islamic State group itself has been reduced from a force that once ruled millions of people to what security officials describe as a few hundred fighters operating in small, scattered cells.

• Roughly 170,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq at the 2007 peak of the occupation
• A few hundred remained by September 2026, all now withdrawn
• More than 4,500 American troops have died in Iraq since 2003
• The Kurdistan region alone absorbed more than 1,000 Iranian drone and missile strikes since February

Who is left to fill the gap

Responsibility for Iraq's internal security now falls entirely to Iraqi federal forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga, a transition Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called "the success of a 12-year campaign" against the Islamic State. But the handover comes with unresolved risks. Iraqi security official Col. Khalid al-Bayati has warned that the group "is still powerful and capable of launching bloody attacks," and, according to a review of the transition by military affairs reporters, Iraqi officials detected suspected Islamic State cells plotting suicide bombings timed to coincide with the pullout.

Kurdish officials have voiced sharper concerns. The region absorbed the bulk of a wave of Iranian drone and ballistic-missile attacks that began in February, and Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said leaving the region "without providing any defence system is a cause for concern." Commander Sirwan Barzani said the morale of Islamic State sleeper cells has been "boosted" by the withdrawal announcements. Sunni communities that suffered under Islamic State rule a decade ago voiced similar unease; tribal leader Abdulrahman al-Zobaie said "Iraq is still not fully ready" and warned that the pullout leaves "a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear."

Divergent declarations of victory

Iran and its Iraqi allies have framed the withdrawal as a triumph. A commander with an Iran-aligned Islamic Resistance faction called it "a historic victory" and "a crushing defeat for the American project," while Iranian officials have said "lasting security will prevail in Iraq" once the last American forces leave. Baghdad, keen to avoid the appearance of ceding ground to Tehran-backed militias, has separately postponed a deadline for those groups to surrender their weapons to state control, pushing it to June 2027, even as the government insists that consolidating arms under state authority remains a "cornerstone of national sovereignty."

"September 30 will be the fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces," Al-Zaidi's office said in a statement confirming the deadline in August, adding that October 1 would mark "a new day" for the country.

Washington's own framing has been notably more cautious than Baghdad's. U.S. officials have described the move as a "reduction," not an end, of the American military role, and have emphasized that the departure of ground troops gives way to a bilateral security relationship that will keep American liaison officers, training programs and arms sales flowing to Iraqi forces. Analysts note that this softer language reflects Washington's wariness of appearing to hand Iraq to Iranian influence outright, even as it exits militarily.

What comes next

Iraq's government has cast the withdrawal as a test of the country's sovereignty as much as its security, betting that a stronger, more independent Iraqi military can hold the line against a diminished but not defeated Islamic State while resisting deeper entrenchment by Iran-aligned armed factions. Washington, for its part, is pivoting its relationship with Baghdad toward economic ties, particularly around oil and reconstruction investment, a shift Trump highlighted when he hosted Al-Zaidi in July.

The coming months will test whether that bet pays off. Iraqi and Kurdish forces must now independently track Islamic State remnants without the intelligence and air support that American units long provided, while the government works through 2026 and into 2027 to bring Iran-backed militias under state control without triggering a domestic backlash. For a country that spent more than two decades as host to one of the largest American military footprints in the world, the days ahead offer the clearest test yet of whether Iraq's security forces, and its fractious political system, can stand on their own.