US to announce plan to draw down troops in Iraq
The U.S. expects to announce next week a long-awaited agreement with Iraq on reducing the U.S. troop presence in the country, two administration officials said on Friday.
Negotiations over the plan, which Iraqi officials have said publicly would lead to the 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq leaving by the end of 2026, are in their final stages, the officials said. They acknowledged that the fight against the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria isn’t over.
“ISIS has definitely been severely defeated, certainly territorially defeated, and we want to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, but the threat does remain,” a senior Defense Department official told reporters Friday. The officials were granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been announced.
The announcement comes amid growing tensions in the region, which has seen Israeli and Hezbollah fighters step up attacks amid fears of a wider war. And since Israel’s war in Gaza began last year, U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have come under attack from Iranian proxies.
The coming announcement, which is expected to take place after U.S. and Iraqi official huddle once again at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York next week, is part of the Biden team’s push to straighten out long-lasting American commitments overseas before President Joe Biden leaves office in January. The administration has also made a big push to get Ukraine on solid footing for some sort of eventual negotiation with Russia on a peace plan. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will deliver his plan to Biden when they meet in Washington after the U.N. meetings.
But the change in U.S. force posture in Iraq has led to some consternation on Capitol Hill.
In a statement released Thursday, House Armed Service Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) expressed frustration with what he has heard from the Pentagon on the deal.
“There seems to be no strategic military advantage to this anticipated decision,” he wrote on social media. “Withdrawing from Iraq in this way would benefit and embolden Iran and ISIS. I am deeply concerned about the impacts such a decision would have on our national security.”
American and Iraqi special operations forces have launched several raids on the group’s leadership in recent months as a result of an uptick in the group’s attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The DOD official said those raids will continue as the U.S. presence in Iraq changes, to “further weaken them, further prevent them from conducting external operations, and disrupt their command and control and their leadership cadres. That ability is going to continue.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said this week that "the justifications are no longer there," for a large U.S. presence in his country. "There is no need for a coalition. We have moved on from wars to stability. ISIS is not really representing a challenge."
Defense Minister Thabit al-Abbasi backed that up in a recent interview with Al-Arabiya television, announcing that the two countries have already reached an agreement to evolve Operation Inherent Resolve, the international coalition formed in 2014 to battle ISIS, into a smaller “sustainable security partnership” that would see the U.S. troop presence in Iraq fall from 2,500 to a smaller advisory element through 2026.
While ISIS is no longer the threat it once was, attacks are up markedly this year, and U.S. special operations forces have conducted several joint strikes with Iraqi troops with one joint U.S./Iraq raid killing 14 terrorists, the U.S. military confirmed.
Attacks claimed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq are on pace to double this year from last year. The group claims 153 attacks across Iraq and Syria in the first six months of 2024, compared to 121 attacks last year.
While the anti-ISIS coalition once numbered around 80 nations when the terrorist group controlled much of western Iraq and eastern Syria, the recent talks have focused on “transitioning away from the coalition military mission to an enduring bilateral security partnership,” the DOD official said. That was the focus of talks between Biden and the Iraqi prime minister when he visited Washington in April.
“We've been working with the Iraqis, and importantly, with all of our coalition partners, to determine when and how, and what that might look like,” the official added.
