U.S.-Led Coalition in Iraq to Wind Down Its Mission

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq who served as a bulwark against attacks by a resurgent Islamic State.

The U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq will end its mission and leave the country over the next two years, the Iraqi and U.S. governments said in a joint statement released on Friday.

Iraq and the United States said they had agreed to conclude the coalition’s military mission in Iraq “over the next twelve months, and no later than the end of September 2025.” They will then transition to a bilateral security partnership “in a manner that supports Iraqi forces and maintains pressure on ISIS,” the statement said, in a reference to the Islamic State.

Iraq is expected to conclude similar bilateral agreements with NATO and with other countries that are in the international anti-ISIS coalition.

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq who served as a bulwark against attacks by a resurgent Islamic State. It also has 900 troops in neighboring Syria who are supported by the U.S. forces in Iraq and work with Syrian Kurdish partners in battling ISIS. The Syrian mission will continue until at least September 2026, subject to conditions in the country, according to the statement.

Iraqi and American military commanders have been negotiating the drawdown for more than a year and now seem to agree on the broad outlines of a plan, although some important details have yet to be disclosed publicly.

Iraq has pressed hard for the U.S. withdrawal under its prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who is backed by a coalition of Shiite Muslim parties that are close to Iran. He has repeatedly said that Iraq is a sovereign state and that Iraqi troops are now fully capable of fighting the Islamic State on their own.

The decision to base the final date of departure on conditions on the ground gives U.S. and Iraqi officials time to re-evaluate whether American troops should indefinitely remain in Iraq, officials said. If, for instance, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria restarts a campaign of large-scale attacks, American trainers and troops might stay, the officials said.

In fact, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, Sabrina Singh, said at a news conference on Friday that “the U.S. is not withdrawing from Iraq.”

A senior U.S. official said the American “footprint” — a Pentagon reference to the number of American troops, trainers and bases in the country — would shrink.

But the official said a substantial U.S. presence would remain in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, and that the number of American troops in Syria could actually increase as the Pentagon moves its assets around the region.

American planners in Iraq expect that they will continue advising counterterrorism units. Several American officials acknowledged that the announcement on Friday was at least partly meant to pacify Iran and Shiite militias, which have been increasingly vocal about wanting the American presence to end.

The Iranian government views the American troops as a potential threat poised just across the border.

Some U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive negotiations.

The presence of U.S. troops at the Ain al Asad Air Base in the Anbar desert in western Iraq has been a flashpoint for the Iran-backed groups, which have repeatedly attacked the Americans at the base. One American official said the United States was likely to leave that base and carry out anti-ISIS missions from other bases in Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. military’s Central Command announced in July that the number of attacks claimed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria was on track to double this year, compared with the year before. ISIS said it was responsible for 153 attacks in the two countries in the first six months of 2024, the command said. While many of the attacks appear to have been in Syria, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided several Islamic State hide-outs in August, killing at least 14 militants.

The U.S. and allied forces have helped Iraqi forces carry out more than 250 counterterrorism missions since last October, American officials said. The United States also brings extensive signal intelligence to the fight, a capability that the Iraqis do not yet have.

Iraq has previously demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops. In 2011, they left Iraq entirely at the request of the Iraqi government. But over the next three years, the Islamic State took control of swaths of northeastern Syria and crossed into Iraq in 2014, taking over Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, before sweeping south. Iraq asked U.S. troops as well as those from other countries, including Iran, to help fight the militants, who were dislodged in 2017.

The main focus of the U.S. troops in Iraq since then has been to help Iraqi forces fight the remnants of the Islamic State and to coordinate on intelligence and strategy. In Syria, the United States primarily has Special Operations forces who work with their partners there, the Syrian Kurds.

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