ISIS Defeat Means US Troops No Longer Needed in Iraq, Says PM Al-Sudani

Iraq’s prime minister said US troops are no longer needed in his country because they have largely succeeded in vanquishing ISIS, and he plans to announce a timetable for their withdrawal soon.

The US has about 2,500 military personnel in Iraq, a legacy of an American-led coalition formed in 2014 to combat the Islamist group widely known as ISIS. While the organization is much weaker than a decade ago — when it held major cities and provinces in Iraq and Syria and shocked the world by posting beheadings online — its fighters still operate in both nations.

The presence in Iraq of soldiers from the US and other countries is politically sensitive and many civilians and politicians want them to leave. Yet some US lawmakers have voiced unease about a total military exit, saying it could allow ISIS to regroup or neighboring Iran to increase its influence within Iraq.

“The justifications are no longer there,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani told Bloomberg TV in an interview in Baghdad on Sunday. “There is no need for a coalition. We have moved on from wars to stability. ISIS is not really representing a challenge.”

He discussed the issue with US President Joe Biden when they met in Washington in April and their countries have reached an understanding on the withdrawal, Al-Sudani said. His defense minister, Thabit Al-Abbasi, told Al-Hadath television this month that the troops will be out by 2026.

The US says talks with Iraq about the coalition and when it will end are ongoing. The two governments are working on an “orderly” transition to a “more enduring bilateral security partnership,” a State Department spokesperson said this month.

The US has had a significant military presence in Iraq for almost all the period since its 2003 invasion to overthrow then-President Saddam Hussein. Most soldiers left in 2011, before some were brought back three years later to fight ISIS.

The group, which sought to spread its brutal and puritanical version of Islam across much of the Middle East, captivated the attention of world powers at its peak, when it controlled parts of Iraq and Syria with around 10 million people and claimed responsibility for atrocities such as the 2015 Paris terror attacks. It was beaten back thanks to efforts by local forces and the likes of the US, Jordan, Iran and Russia.

Today, ISIS still has hundreds of fighters in Syria and Iraq and offshoots in nations such as Nigeria and Yemen. In March, a branch known as ISIS-K killed about 140 people when gunmen went on a rampage at a concert hall in Moscow. Six people were killed in Oman in July in an attack claimed by ISIS. The US consistently says the group — both its core and the affiliates — continues to pose significant security threats, and keeps about 900 troops in Syria for that reason.

US and Iraqi soldiers conducted a joint raid against ISIS in western Iraq as recently as late August and killed 14 militants, including senior leaders, the US military said. Seven Americans were injured in the operation, the Associated Press reported.

The prime minister said Iraqi troops’ role in such raids showed they were capable of combating ISIS on their own.

“They are hunting those people,” he said. “They are finding them and killing them. This is the victory we achieved. This is proof the security apparatus has reached a level of capability” the Americans and Iraqis sought.

Tehran has extensive power over several Iraqi political parties and militias. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, visited Iraq — a fellow Shiite-majority nation — last week in what was his first foreign trip in the role.

Some of those militias have targeted US bases in the region since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October, with one drone attack in Jordan in January killing three US soldiers. The frequency of those assaults waned after Washington launched a wave of strikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq in February. The Iraqi government accused the US of killing 16 civilians and destabilizing the Middle East even further.

Al-Sudani said his government was trying to use its close ties to both Iran and the US to improve relations between them, though he did not detail how. Tensions between Tehran and Washington have worsened since Iran and Israel traded direct fire in April. More recently, the US has accused Iran of sending ballistic missiles to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine, and voiced concern that Moscow is sharing nuclear technology with the Islamic Republic.

The Iraqi prime minister said he is confident Iraq and the US will continue to cooperate on security and economic matters even after a troop withdrawal. The outcome of the November election, pitting former President Donald Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris, won’t change that, he said.

“We will deal with any administration,” he said.

Al-Sudani lamented the fallout from the war in Gaza and said the Middle East is in a “dangerous” phase. He reiterated his government’s support of the Palestinians and criticism of Israel.

Click here to watch more of the interview with Al-Sudani.

“We are facing a side that doesn’t recognize the international system with all its conventions and agreements,” he said of Israel, a country with which Iraq has no official relations.

The Gaza conflict started when Hamas, a group backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage. Israel’s subsequent offensive has killed more than 41,000 people in the Palestinian territory, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there.

Al-Sudani denied a New York Times report from the weekend that Hamas and the Houthis — another Iran-backed militant group based in Yemen — had opened offices in Baghdad.

“There are no official offices of this kind here,” he said. Still, he added, the groups may have officials in the country.