US Troops Complete Iraq Exit, Handing Iran a Strategic Opening

American forces are completing their withdrawal from Iraq, vacating their final bases by Wednesday and closing a military chapter that began with the 2003 invasion and cost about 4,500 US lives.

The exit was set in motion under President Joe Biden in 2024 and has been carried through by Donald Trump's administration, even as Washington presses its confrontation with Tehran. For Iran and its regional allies, the departure removes what they long described as a military counterweight.

"Iran stands to benefit strategically from the coalition's departure because it removes a military presence that for years acted as a counterweight to Tehran's influence in Iraq," said Jasim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who studies Shi'ite armed groups aligned with Iran. He said those factions would present the pullout as a win and push for more say over security and political decisions.

A commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of Iran-backed factions, Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, called the withdrawal "a historic victory" and said September 30 would mark the closing of "a black page" in the country's history.

Iran's government has welcomed the move. Amir Hayat Moqaddam, deputy chairman of the National Security Commission in Iran's parliament, said lasting security would prevail in Iraq once US troops leave, and that Tehran would support the withdrawal. Washington has accused Iran-backed militias in Iraq of carrying out attacks on neighbouring countries at Tehran's direction, including a strike this month on a major Saudi oil pipeline. Baghdad says it is working to limit their influence.

Not all Iraqis see the exit as cause for celebration. Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, said the country is not yet ready to take full responsibility for its security. "All Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty," he said, but warned that a coalition departure "in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear."

American troops first invaded in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein, then occupied the country, helped install a Shi'ite-led government and fought an insurgency before leaving at the end of 2011. They returned less than three years later to help defeat Islamic State, which had seized a third of Iraq. In recent years Iraq has been the only state to keep close political and military ties with both Washington and Tehran, and its territory has repeatedly served as a proxy battleground — including the 2020 US drone strike at Baghdad airport that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

In this year's war with Iran, seven of the 18 US service members killed died in Iraq, the most recent an army sergeant killed in July during a controlled detonation of a drone near Erbil.

Iraqi security officials, in both the federal government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, warn that the pullout could revive Islamic State, whose sleeper cells remain active despite the collapse of its self-declared caliphate nearly a decade ago. Kurdish commander Sirwan Barzani said the loss of US intelligence, logistics and drone support would give the militants room to regroup, and that cell movements had been observed in the two weeks since the withdrawal was announced.

Iraqi forces said a suspected Islamic State cell was preparing suicide attacks to coincide with the pullout, a plot that four security and army officials said showed the group can still exploit gaps. "Islamic State is seeking to send a message that the group is still powerful and capable of launching bloody attacks," said Colonel Khalid al-Bayati, a senior security official in Kirkuk.