WASHINGTON – U.S. forces are set to withdraw from Iraq by the end of September, American and Iraqi officials announced Tuesday, closing out a 23-year military presence that began with the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein and later narrowed into counterterrorism operations targeting the Islamic State group.
President Donald Trump, appearing at the White House with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, said the United States no longer believes a military deployment in Iraq is necessary, pointing as well to Iraq’s expanding ties with energy firms.
“The relationship is a whole big relationship where we don’t need the military,” Trump said. “We’re there to help them. We’re there to protect them if need be. But we don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
Al-Zaidi, speaking through an interpreter, said that “U.S. forces will be out of Iraq” by Sept. 30, adding that “U.S. companies will be inside Iraq.”
In a statement issued afterward, the Pentagon said the move reaffirmed a 2024 agreement with Baghdad to wind down the U.S. mission against IS militants. A significant number of American troops who were in Iraq when that Biden-era agreement was reached have already left.
Washington has been gradually transferring responsibility for the fight against IS in Iraq from U.S. and coalition personnel to Iraqi security forces trained by the American military. As part of that shift, U.S. troops have reduced their presence, pulled back from some locations and consolidated remaining forces.
The U.S. invasion began in March 2003 with a large-scale bombing assault described as “shock and awe,” illuminating the night sky, devastating broad areas of Iraq and clearing the way for American ground forces to advance on Baghdad. The war was launched on claims that Saddam Hussein had hidden weapons of mass destruction — assertions later proven wrong, as no such weapons were found.
At the height of counterinsurgency efforts in 2007, the U.S. troop presence in Iraq exceeded 170,000. The Obama administration later negotiated a drawdown, and by December 2011 the last American combat troops had departed, leaving behind only a limited military contingent to operate a security assistance office and a Marine detachment assigned to protect the U.S. Embassy compound.
In 2014, the rise of the Islamic State group and its rapid capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought U.S. and partner nation forces back at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help rebuild and retrain police and military units that had fallen apart and fled.
After IS lost its hold on the territory it once claimed, coalition military operations ended in 2021. The U.S. had maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for training and to conduct partnered counter-IS operations with Iraq’s military. Many have withdrawn since the 2024 agreement to end the mission, with just a small contingent of military advisers and others still remaining in Iraq.
