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The U.S. military has withdrawn its forces from Iraq, 23 years after it invaded the country in 2003, according to a national public radio network report from Baghdad. The departure marks the formal end of one of the longest and most consequential American military engagements of the modern era, closing a chapter that began with the toppling of Saddam Hussein and evolved through years of insurgency, sectarian conflict, and the fight against the Islamic State group.
U.S. military forces were set to depart from bases in Iraq on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, a major U.S. newspaper’s Baghdad dispatch reported. The timing was no accident. The withdrawal is part of a timeline agreed upon by Washington and Baghdad in 2024, according to a news aggregator report, giving both governments more than a year to plan the transition.
A Deadline Called ‘Fixed and Final’
Iraqi officials made clear there would be no extensions. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said the September 30 deadline for ending the US-led international coalition’s military mission in Iraq was “fixed and final,” his office said. That framework, struck in 2024, set out how the US-led military coalition would conclude its mission in Iraq by September 30, a deployment established to help defeat ISIS after it swept across large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, a Middle East-focused news outlet reported.
An unnamed U.S. official told a news agency that the US expected to complete its pullout by September 30, but declined to say how many troops remained in Iraq or where they would be redeployed. That silence left open questions about the exact scale of the final departure, even as officials on both sides treated the date as a hard endpoint rather than a target.
End of a Coalition Mission
Wednesday’s withdrawal deadline affirmed the exodus of a few hundred remaining US soldiers in the country, who had served in advisory roles in a coalition operation against ISIL first launched in 2015, a regional news outlet’s report from Iraq said. The coalition’s footprint in Iraq is now gone, but its broader mission is not over. U.S. Central Command said the anti-ISIS coalition that had been headquartered in Iraq would now move to Jordan as U.S. forces continued counterterrorism operations in Syria.
That relocation signals that Washington still views the Islamic State as an active threat in the region, even as it steps back from the ground presence it maintained in Iraq for more than two decades. The shift to Jordan allows the coalition to keep monitoring developments in Syria and the wider region without a permanent base inside Iraqi territory.
Baghdad Marks the Moment, Militias Claim Victory
Iraq is set to hold four “Sovereignty Days,” a national holiday marking the complete withdrawal of US troops from the country, a regional news outlet’s report from Iraq said. The commemoration reflects how significant the departure is to many Iraqis, for whom the presence of foreign troops has long been a politically sensitive issue.
Not everyone framed the moment the same way. Iran-backed armed groups described the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq as a “historic victory” and a “crushing defeat for the American project.” The statement underscores the deep political divisions that persist in Iraq over the U.S. military role, and hints at how various factions will seek to shape the narrative around the troop exit in the months ahead.
Security Concerns Linger Despite Exit
The departure does not erase the security challenges Iraq continues to face. Despite the withdrawal, concerns remain over the influence of Iran-backed militias and the risk of Islamic State exploiting gaps left by the coalition’s departure, Iraqi security officials and analysts said. Those worries are not new, but they take on added weight now that the American military footprint that once helped counterbalance such threats has been removed.
Washington has not signaled that the risks in Iraq have disappeared. The U.S. State Department continues to warn against travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, and armed conflict risks, a caution that predates the withdrawal but takes on new resonance now that American forces are no longer stationed there.
The human cost of the two-decade engagement remains part of the story as the mission closes. It was reported that 4,500 Americans have died during more than two decades of US military involvement in Iraq, a toll that spans the initial invasion, the insurgency that followed, and the later campaign against the Islamic State. For families of those service members, and for the thousands of Iraqis affected by the conflict, Wednesday’s withdrawal closes a military chapter but leaves unresolved questions about what comes next for Iraq’s security and its relationship with both Washington and Tehran.
