U.S. troops are expected to leave Iraq on Wednesday after a 12-year ISIS campaign, ending a costly presence while questions about Iran and a terror rebound remain.
The Pentagon said the total withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is expected to finish Wednesday in what it called an “orderly departure,” with Sept. 30 fixed as the final pullout date after years of drawdowns and base consolidations.
ABC News reported that the exit closes a U.S. military presence inside Iraq that stretched more than two decades and ends a second full departure from the country, the first came in 2011 after the 2003 invasion.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell framed the moment as both a battlefield result and a handoff to Baghdad.
"This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region."
Parnell also said the pullout “marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.”
The withdrawal plan was negotiated with Iraq by the Biden administration in 2024. The Trump administration kept that plan in place and held to Sept. 30 as the final date for U.S. forces to leave.
For years, about 2,500 U.S. troops had remained in Iraq after the fight against the Islamic State group. Their presence followed the 2014 crisis, when ISIS seized wide areas of Syria and northern Iraq and threatened the approaches to Baghdad. American forces returned, and the group was defeated militarily in 2019. Officials still treated a residual U.S. footprint as necessary to keep ISIS from rebuilding.
That residual force shrank further this year. The U.S. consolidated positions across the country into northern Iraq and quietly moved forces out of Erbil after the start of the war with Iran. In recent months the American presence there had already become very small. Earlier this year, U.S. forces also left eastern Syria after the new Syrian government pressed against America’s Syrian Kurdish partners.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi attended a ceremony his office said marked the end of the international mission to combat ISIS in Iraq. His office summarized his message as a declaration of hard-won control by Iraqi forces.
"He emphasized that Iraq is today reaping the rewards of immense sacrifices and years of heroic effort, culminating in our security agencies -- across all branches -- establishing full control over the security and operational landscape throughout the country."
U.S. support had included equipment transfers under the Counter-ISIS Training and Equip Fund, administered with Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve. Iraqi Security Forces inspected Humvee fleets divested at Erbil Air Base as that partnership wound down. Satellite imagery and ground photos from Erbil International Airport in late September showed the final stage of the American exit from northern Iraq, including Joint Base Balad and related sites used during the long campaign.
Wednesday’s departure is the second time the United States has withdrawn all military forces from Iraq. The first full pullout came in 2011, ending an eight-year presence that began with the 2003 invasion. Roughly three years later, ISIS’s blitz forced a U.S. return.
The human cost of the longer war is stark. Approximately 4,500 U.S. military deaths occurred in Iraq, the vast majority between 2003 and 2011. The 12-year anti-ISIS mission that followed never matched that scale of loss, but it kept American troops in harm’s way long after the caliphate’s cities fell.
Parnell’s statement presents ISIS as beaten as an organized military threat. The open questions left on the table are familiar ones for anyone who watched the post-2011 vacuum: how much sway Iran retains inside Iraq, and whether a diminished terror network can again exploit weak spots once U.S. combat power is gone.
Iraq’s leaders say their own security agencies now hold the field. American officials say the wartime coalition mission is over and a more normal bilateral security relationship comes next. Taxpayers and military families who carried the burden will measure those claims by what happens after the last aircraft leaves Erbil, not by the ceremony that marked the handoff.
A nation that spent blood and treasure twice in Iraq has every right to demand that Baghdad hold the ground it now claims, and that Washington never again confuse a calendar deadline with a finished fight.
