US Troops to Exit Iraq by Sept 30 as Militias Refuse to Disarm

Iraq faces two converging deadlines at the end of September: the completion of the US military withdrawal and the expiry of an ultimatum for non-state armed groups to lay down their weapons. The two are linked by the Iraqi government, but the most powerful militias have signalled they will not comply.

A US military official said the pullout would be finished by Sept. 30, with the hundreds of troops still stationed in northern Iraq mostly redeployed to Jordan and other regional countries. Military equipment, including air defence systems, will also be removed. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a "normal bilateral security cooperation" arrangement could later be negotiated with Baghdad, though its shape remains unclear.

The counterterrorism base in Irbil has lost its importance for US forces as the Islamic State threat has receded, the official said. Northern Iraq largely did not serve as an "offensive platform" during the war with Iran, but US forces there were frequently targeted by Iran and Iran-backed Iraqi militias, so the withdrawal "will reduce our risk."

Washington nonetheless remains concerned about the ability of Iraqi militias to strike targets elsewhere in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, and about the presence of Houthi rebel forces in Iraq. In the past, the US has struck militia sites in Iraq in retaliation and has imposed sanctions on some groups.

US troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein and departed in 2011. Three years later, Iraqi authorities invited a smaller US-led mission to fight the Islamic State group, which had seized large swaths of territory. With the extremist group now reduced to scattered sleeper cells — a result of both the US-led coalition and Iran-backed militias — Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind the mission down. US troops left bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, where bases have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched their war against Iran.

Iraqi officials have wavered over whether Sept. 30 is a hard deadline for disarmament or merely the start of negotiations. Analyst Sajad Jiyad, speaking at a panel convened by the Atlantic Center think tank last week, said: "There will be no disarming of any groups by the 30th of September. I think that's probably clear to anybody who watches Iraqi politics."

A handful of less-influential militias have agreed to hand over their weapons, but the strongest groups — and those closest to Iran, including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada — have rejected disarmament or set conditions the government is unlikely to meet soon. These include bringing the Kurdish peshmerga under central government command and expelling Iranian Kurdish dissident groups and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, from the region.

"After establishing these parameters, discussions will focus on regulating weapons, not surrendering them," an official with one of the Iran-backed militias said. "There is absolutely no decision among the factions to surrender weapons, and we have not surrendered any weapons."

A government official said the current strategy focuses on bringing armed factions under the control of the Iraqi military. Many militias are already part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of armed groups officially part of the Iraqi armed forces, although individual militias often act independently. The government wants factions to hand over "dynamic weapons," including missiles and long-range aircraft, to the PMF's central leadership, and for individual factions to be dissolved and placed under PMF and army command.

Government spokesperson Sabah al-Numan said last week that "discussions and dialogues are ongoing, and the file will be resolved after the withdrawal of the international coalition forces."

While the US withdrawal removes one target from the Kurdish region, it may not halt attacks. Mohammed A. Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that Iran and affiliated groups "have targeted other locations in the Kurdistan region that have not been related to the US troops' presence," including bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, energy facilities and the office of Kurdish region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. "The withdrawal will expose the Kurdistan region even further and make it an even easier target," Salih said.

Regional government officials declined to comment, but Barzani has publicly expressed anxiety that the removal of US air defences would leave the area more vulnerable. Numan said the Iraqi government was close to procuring new air defence systems from South Korea, Turkey and the US, which "will be deployed according to carefully devised military plans to ensure the complete protection of Iraqi airspace, including the Kurdistan region."