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The Pentagon has announced that US forces finished pulling out of Iraq on Wednesday, ending a 12-year campaign against ISIS and a military presence that, on and off, dates back to the 2003 invasion.
Getting into it: All remaining coalition troops and their gear left Erbil Air Base in Iraq’s Kurdish north, home to about 1,500 troops before the drawdown, marking the end of Operation Inherent Resolve, the mission launched in 2014 after ISIS seized roughly 40% of Iraq. The US and Iraq settled on the pullout in a 2024 deal struck under Biden.
The coalition headquarters running the fight against ISIS is now based in Jordan, some US troops are still in Syria, and a small security detail will remain to guard US diplomatic staff. The Pentagon says it will keep providing training and intelligence support to Iraqi forces, which now have the main responsibility for the country’s security. Iraq’s government marked the occasion by naming Sept. 30 “Sovereignty Day” and kicked off a three-day holiday across the country.
“This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. “It also marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.”
President Trump called it “a victory for the United States, a victory for Iraq, and a decisive victory over ISIS,” saying, “We came to fight a caliphate, and there is no longer a caliphate, so we are going home.” But ISIS isn’t completely gone, with a UN report in August estimating the group still has hundreds of fighters in Iraq, though it says they can only carry out small-scale attacks.
Kurdish officials warned the region is being left with no air defense system in place, even as Iran has launched around 1,000 ballistic missiles at it since late February. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi now aims to strip Iran-backed militias of their weapons by June 2027, after missing his original September deadline.
