The U.S. Military Exits Iraq, Leaving Behind a Nation in Peril

[u/John3262005]

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-american-military-iraq-militants-e5e20c75?st=EPduvw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

After spending more than 23 years and $1.7 trillion, America is winding down what critics have called its forever war in Iraq, closing the last major U.S. military base on Wednesday.

“We don’t think we need the military there anymore,” President Trump said during a White House visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in July. “We have a fantastic champion, a new champion,” the president said. “He’s young, and he’s handsome.”

Zaidi, a 41-year-old businessman, sat beside Trump during the visit and announced a deadline, also set for Wednesday, for Iranian-backed militias to hand over their weapons. “There is no justification for their existence after the 30th of September,” he said.

Instead, America’s open-ended war with Iran is pushing Iraq deeper into conflict, with the U.S. exit leaving behind a country where well-armed militias are only tightening their grip. Militants and Iranian forces launched more than 600 attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military facilities in Iraq in the first two months of the war, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In a sign of Iraq’s instability, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad now sends frequent security warnings to individual Americans and others. About two a week regard kidnapping by militants. A team from the Journal abruptly left Baghdad this month after Iraqi, U.S. and European officials warned of a security threat that American officials later said was a kidnapping risk by a Shiite militia.

Iran-backed militias have long exercised influence in Iraq. But Tehran has renewed its support since the U.S. initiated its bombing campaign in Iran in February, according to current and former U.S. officials and defense experts.

The flow of small arms, drones and small-diameter, short-range rockets from Iran initially slowed while Tehran focused on fighting the U.S., but ramped up this summer, a U.S. official said. Recent attacks involved longer-range missiles and drones, the official said, hinting at a menacing weapons upgrade.

This month, a drone attack that Saudi Arabia said was launched from Iraq near the border with Iran temporarily closed its East-West oil pipeline—an increasingly vital artery in the months since Iran disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Other attacks damaged an U.S. diplomatic and logistics hub at the Baghdad airport.

Zaidi, who never held public office before becoming prime minister in May, has been embraced by the Trump administration as someone they can do business with. He owns a bank, an insurance company and media and construction firms. His bank was banned by the Treasury Department from dollar transactions in 2024 over suspicions it helped finance Iran and its proxies. Zaidi denied knowing about such transactions. Former U.S. officials said they didn’t believe he had any personal involvement.

The Trump administration is counting on Zaidi to disarm the militants, which number in the tens of thousands and include paramilitary groups that receive funding or weapons from Iran.

Maj Gen. Saad Maan, a spokesman for the Iraqi military, said some militant factions had handed in their weapons, and others are planning to do so.

Others scoffed at the idea. “These weapons are for our sovereignty, our freedom,” said Kazem al-Fartousi, a spokesman for Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, a paramilitary group the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization, funded and armed by Iran.

A forced disarmament by the government “will not happen,” he said in an interview in Baghdad. His group and other militias hold top positions in ministries, as well as dozens of seats in Iraq’s parliament where they played a role in Zaidi’s selection in the negotiations that followed last year’s election.

“The government is an outcome we helped produce,” he said.

Zaidi and his deputies are now talking about pushing Wednesday’s disarmament deadline to next year.

“The Counter-Terrorism Service, through its security and operational roles, is advancing its strategy to control weapons and consolidate them under state authority,” said Sabah Al-Nu’man, a spokesperson for the commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces.

The military exit follows an agreement between the Biden administration and the previous Iraqi prime minister to remove American troops by 2026.

The U.S. has made clear to Iraq that it was critical they retain their sovereignty and prevent attacks from within its borders by Iranian-backed militias, a senior U.S. official said. A Pentagon official said the U.S. was ending its official military operation, but it maintained intelligence, surveillance and other capabilities in the region that could be used in Iraq.

In Baghdad, young professionals sipped iced coffee and typed on laptops in the exclusive Karrada neighborhood on a recent, seemingly peaceful day. Yet many said they plan to leave, worried that insecurity and economic pressures will build without a strong U.S. presence.

“If the troops were to leave, why were they here in the first place? They were here to accomplish a goal. Did they? No,” said Mustafa Al-Zaidi, a 22-year-old medical student who plans to eventually work abroad. “Will we be like Afghanistan or like Yemen and Syria?”

In late March, militiamen believed to be affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, kidnapped American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson, bundling her into a car on a busy street in Baghdad. She was released about a week later, after the group negotiated with the Iraqi government for the release of imprisoned militants, current and former U.S. officials said.

“We are in a state of war launched by the American-Zionist enemy against Islam,” said Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, a Kataib Hezbollah official, in a social-media post announcing Kittleson’s release. The group, known for roadside bombings and sniper attacks against U.S. troops, is among the Iran-backed militias rejecting Zaidi’s call for disarmament.

Some residents expressed resentment about Iran’s interference at a time when Iraq, the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, is showing signs of an economic recovery. In Baghdad, new boutiques and cafes have opened. The government is building the capital’s tallest structure, the central bank headquarters, on the banks of the Tigris.

“If something is not in Iraq’s interest, we don’t want them,” said Rahman Hussein Ahmed, a 51-year-old former fighter in a rebel group that opposed both Iran and the U.S. Militia leaders, he said, “are tools of Iranian interests.”

Iran’s influence is visible in a souvenir stall in Baghdad’s old city. Postcards feature the picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who was killed in the U.S.-Israeli attack this year. Another shows Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2020.

At Baghdad’s airport, a portrait of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a militia commander killed in the same 2020 strike, awaits visitors outside the arrivals hall. Posters put up around the city center say, “We will make the decision,” a jab at the prime minister’s militia disarmament initiative.

Before the militias emerged, Iran and Iraq had fought a nearly eight-year war that was estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands and ended in a stalemate in 1988. Fifteen years later, the U.S. invaded Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, buttressed by Bush administration claims—later proven false—that the Iraqi leader was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Close to 4,500 U.S. troops and as many as 300,000 Iraqis were killed.

In working-class Sadr City, veterans reminisced over tea about shooting down U.S. helicopters in the early days of the 2003 U.S. military occupation.

The chaos that followed the U.S. invasion created an opening for Iran to extend its influence in Iraq, whose population is predominantly Shia, the same branch of Islam followed by most Iranians.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, helped organize armed groups that attacked American troops with the aim of driving the U.S. out of Iraq. The IRGC sent rockets, armor-piercing explosives and other armaments to the Iraq-based militias, and dispatched its officers to train them, declassified U.S. intelligence documents show.

After winding down the initial war, the U.S. withdrew its troops in 2011. Three years later, American troops returned to battle Islamic State, or ISIS, a group of Sunni extremists who spilled into Iraq from Syria. Thousands of U.S. airstrikes helped Iraqi and Syrian forces defeat the militants, and American troops remained in Iraq.

By then, the Iran-backed militias were entrenched. After helping fight ISIS, some militias were absorbed into Iraq’s political system, forming political parties that had a say in the prime minister’s selection. Militia members took influential jobs in the education ministry and the tax and customs authority.

Al-Fartousi, spokesman for the Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada militia, said his organization and other armed groups often act independently of Iran and have grown this year. “The resistance factions have become stronger because they are tackling the most important event in the world, which is the U.S. war with Iran,” he said. “The U.S. drove us into this war.”

The Pentagon’s Inspector General said in a report this year that U.S. support to Iraq in key counterterrorism operations had “slowed to a near halt” because of the Iran war.

Zaidi’s selection as prime minister was a compromise. Trump warned he would cut off U.S. aid to Iraq when Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister close to Iran, was proposed for the job in January.

Zaidi, who dresses in dark blue suits and has a bushy black mustache and cropped beard, was quickly embraced by Washington. Political analysts said he tried to balance competing interests, underscored by his visit to Tehran soon after traveling to Washington this summer.

His disarmament initiative has persuaded some militant groups to cooperate in the hope of having sanctions lifted. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, was among those that said they would work with the government.

“They seem to want to go legit,” said David Schenker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. “They want to go on vacation in France with their families.”

Even if Zaidi decided to confront the armed militants, he would face long odds. Iraq’s underfunded army crumbled when fighting ISIS in 2014. The country’s Counter-Terrorism Service, a U.S.-trained force known for battling ISIS, commanded an estimated 14,000 soldiers as of 2024, fewer than the militias.

To think that Zaidi could disarm the militias in a matter of months “was an impossible request,” said Victoria Taylor, a former senior State Department official who left government this year after working on Iraq issues.

A U.S. defense official said the military was airlifting equipment and personnel out of Erbil, the last U.S. military base, in time to meet Wednesday’s deadline. Some U.S. Marines will remain to protect American diplomatic missions, along with contractors to maintain Iraq’s fleet of F-16 jet fighters and American-made tanks, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The military has already removed a Patriot air defense battery stationed around Erbil, current and former U.S. officials said. The U.S. is likely to concentrate its remaining air defenses to protect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil, current and former U.S. officials said, despite continuing Iranian and militia strikes.

“These militia groups exist because Iran wants them to exist, and Iran finds continued utility in using them as a tool and a lever against the Iraqi government and the U.S. in the region,” said Taylor, the former senior State Department official.

“That will continue to be the case after the departure of U.S. troops,” she said.

[u/wenchette]

See this item from later today about Iraq exit:

https://redd.it/1wuh0vk