U.S. forces are set to depart from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday, a move celebrated as a victory by Iran and its allies, who now have deep influence in the country where 4,500 Americans died during more than two decades of war.
Iraqi security experts say the withdrawal — agreed to in 2024 under U.S. President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran — could give Tehran and its allies free rein, while also allowing other U.S. enemies, including the Islamic State, to stage a comeback.
It is glaring now more than ever that the regional security is to be primarily handle by the middle east leaders with Tehran playing major roles.
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 security analyst specialising in studying armed Shi’ite groups aligned with Iran.
He predicted that the pro-Iranian militia groups would not only portray the departure as a victory for their movement, but also “seek to translate that momentum into greater influence over security and political decision making.”
Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, described the U.S. withdrawal as “a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and honorable Iraqis, and a crushing defeat for the American project.”
“On Sept. 30, we will celebrate the turning of a black page in Iraq’s history and the failure of the occupation to impose its will on our country,” he told Reuters. “Iraq has proven that its sovereignty cannot be secured by foreign forces, but by the resistance and the will of its people.”
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While the eventual departure of U.S. forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, those who worry about the strength of the Iran-backed groups fear the withdrawal is premature.
“We believe Iraq is still not fully ready to take over the security file at this time,” Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, once a bastion of anti-American resistance, told Reuters.
“All Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty, and no Iraqi would dispute that. But I believe that the [U.S.-led coalition] leaving in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear.”
American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein, and went on to occupy the country, install a Shi’ite-led government and fight a years-long counterinsurgency before withdrawing at the end of 2011.
They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group the Islamic State in a major war from 2014 to 2017.
Around twice as many Americans died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
In recent years, Iraq has been the only country to maintain close political and military alliances with both the United States and Iran, which sometimes used Iraqi territory as a proxy battlefield.
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