The US military will leave Iraq by the end of September, US and Iraqi officials said Tuesday, following a 23-year occupation that started with the 2003 illegal invasion against Saddam Hussein and ended with much smaller operations against the Islamic State group.
President Donald Trump, standing alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi at the White House, said “we don’t think we need the military there anymore” and noted Iraq’s growing relationships with oil companies.
“The relationship is a whole big relationship where we don’t need the military,” Trump said. “We’re there to help them. We’re there to protect them if need be. But we don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
Speaking through an interpreter, al-Zaidi said, “US forces will be out of Iraq” by 30 Sept., “while US companies will be inside Iraq.”
The Pentagon said in a subsequent statement that it was reaffirming a 2024 agreement with Iraq to end its mission against IS fighters. Many of the US troops still serving in Iraq at the time of the deal, which was made during the Biden administration, have already departed.
The United States has been shifting the burden for combating IS in Iraq from American and coalition forces to Iraqi troops who the US military has trained.
The US illegally invaded Iraq in March 2003 in what it called a massive “shock and awe” bombing campaign that lit up the skies, laid waste to large sections of the country, killing about a million, according to some estimates, and paved the way for US ground troops to occupy Baghdad.
The US presence grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of its direct occupation in 2007. In December 2011, the final combat troops departed, leaving only a small number of military personnel behind to staff a security assistance office and a Marine detachment to guard the embassy compound.
In 2014, the rise of the Islamic State group and its rapid capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought US and partner nation forces back at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help rebuild and retrain police and military units that had fallen apart and fled.
After coalition military operations ended in 2021, the US maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for training and to conduct partnered counter-IS operations with Iraq’s military. Many have withdrawn since the 2024 agreement to end the mission, with just a small contingent of military advisers and others remaining in Iraq.
