The United States military has completed the withdrawal of all American troops and military equipment from Iraq, officially concluding the 12-year multinational campaign known as Operation Inherent Resolve.
The announcement from the Department of Defense marked the formal conclusion of an anti-ISIS military mission that first deployed in 2014 after extremist militants overran large swaths of Iraqi territory. According to Pentagon officials, the final departure was completed after coalition forces and remaining hardware were evacuated from Erbil Air Base in the Kurdistan region. The drawdown fulfills a bilateral agreement reached between Washington and Baghdad in September 2024 to systematically wind down the coalition presence and shift toward a normalized security partnership.
At its height during the mid-2000s surge, the American military deployment in Iraq exceeded 160,000 personnel before an initial pullout in 2011, which was reversed three years later to repel the Islamic State. In recent years under Operation Inherent Resolve, approximately 2,500 American troops had served in advisory, logistical, and training roles alongside Iraqi armed forces and Kurdish Peshmerga units. While the command overseeing regional anti-ISIS operations will shift its headquarters to Jordan to support ongoing activities in Syria, primary responsibility for domestic security now rests entirely with Iraqi authorities.
President Donald Trump hailed the conclusion as a major achievement, asserting that the exit prevents temporary deployments from turning into permanent military commitments. Iraqi leaders and regional allies welcomed the departure as a milestone for national sovereignty and commemorated the transfer of full authority to local commands. Nevertheless, defense analysts and Kurdish leadership voiced concerns that the withdrawal of coalition air defenses could leave vulnerable areas exposed to lingering insurgent cells and outside regional pressures.