U.S.' Military Future in Iraq 'Is Not A Withdrawal,' Officials Declare

The Iraqi PM wants the U.S. out. The U.S. instead negotiates a "transition" to an "enduring bilateral relationship." 

Edited by Sam Thielman

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FOR THE PAST YEAR, under the shadow of the Israel-driven regional war in the Middle East, the Iraqi government has been negotiating the future contours of United States military presence in their country with the U.S. Those negotiations continue. And judging from a briefing given to reporters on Friday, the U.S. objective, unsurprisingly, is to keep as much of the status quo as possible—a status quo that keeps about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, along with 900 in Syria, for which Iraqi territory is a crucial staging ground. 

"I just want to footstomp this," a senior Biden administration official told reporters. "This is not a withdrawal, this is a transition."

And how. Neither the senior administration official nor a senior Defense official—the terms of the briefing FOREVER WARS attended keeps me from naming them—offered any details about troop numbers, departure schedules or facilities retrogrades. All of that, they said, remains the subject of discussion with the Iraqis, even as Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani will arrive in Washington on Monday for a ministerial-level meeting of the anti-ISIS coalition.

The lack of detail offered by the officials would be conspicuous on its own terms ahead of a foreign head of state's imminent visit. But Sudani has been rather specific in public about how he sees the future military relationship. Citing a diminished threat from ISIS—the formal basis for the continued U.S. troop presence—"There is no need for the coalition forces to remain" in Iraq, Sudani told Bloomberg last week. “The justifications are no longer there.” The Iraqi PM even said he planned to, in the reporter's paraphrase, "announce a timetable for their withdrawal soon."

While neither senior official said this, it sounds a whole lot like the U.S. is engaging in one of its favorite pastimes: behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering with the Iraqi government to remain in Iraq militarily for longer than much of its non-Kurdish constituency actually wants. 

Such maneuvering happened in 2007-8, during the first U.S.-Iraqi negotiation on a Status of Forces Agreement underpinning a continued U.S. stay, however much the Iraqis ended up thwarting U.S. aspirations for an open-ended presence. It happened again, under Vice President Joe Biden no less, in 2010, and again the U.S. ended up unable to clear the hurdle of Iraqi opposition. Most caustically, it happened yet again in 2020, when the Iraqi parliament voted to evict the U.S. after it assassinated the Iranian military potentate Qassem Soleimani, and the Trump administration simply told Iraq to fuck off. As a reporter who's covered this stuff for 20-plus years, I felt on this briefing call like Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen #4, watching events across time unfold simultaneously. 

The two senior officials described a two-phase "transition" process that will culminate in an "enduring bilateral security relationship." In Phase 1, which I gather will be announced next week and will last until the end of September 2025, the formal ISIS-coalition military command, known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, will disband, and U.S. forces will leave "certain locations" in Iraq. Which bases? They wouldn't say, nor did they sound like they have that worked out with the Iraqis.

In Phase 2, concluding in September 2026, the Syria mission will continue, but the U.S. military mission will "evolve." Both officials were highly vague, and frustrated reporters' attempts at obtaining granularity through follow-up questions. But they made it sound like on a bilateral basis, outside of the 2014-2026 Anti-ISIS Coalition structure of CJTR-OIR, the U.S. may continue to advise and assist certain Iraqi forces, particularly the counterterrorism commandos, the Air Force and the Kurdish Peshmerga. So that sounds a whole lot like the U.S. will just recontextualize what it's already doing in Iraq, perhaps at a lower operational tempo and with fewer troops and resources. "This is an active dialogue with the Iraqis," one of the officials said. 

And since the military mission in Syria depends in large part on staging from Iraq, expect the U.S. to seek to stay in its al-Asad air base, the Kurdish city of Erbil, and other Syria-useful places like that. By the way, the U.S. has no international legal mandate to be in Syria at all—not that that came up during the briefing. 

Neither official discussed the obvious: how the ongoing and escalating Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have drawn in the Iranian coalition that remains potent in Iraq, has influenced these negotiations, which—although the U.S. obscures this to de-link the issue—got going in earnest because of Sudani's objections to U.S. military strikes against Iran-aligned forces on Iraqi territory. The U.S. has upped its military presence in the Middle East to nearly 50,000, including the deployment of two aircraft carrier strike groups. And the undeclared U.S. military mission in Iraq isn't about ISIS at all; it's about thwarting Iran and the Iranian coalition. The U.S. is clearly not looking to vacate Iraq, certainly not under current conditions of crisis. That means U.S. troops who remain in Iraq will remain targets. 

With an interruption of only two and a half years, the U.S. military has occupied and then operated in Iraq since 2003. The maintenance of Iraq as a staging ground for U.S. regional power is a constant, with only the justifications changing. I wrote my first reported feature on enduring U.S. bases in Iraq in 2006. The magazine where I worked at the time, The New Republic, refused to publish it, because the subject sounded to its then-editor like hysterical left-wing catastrophizing. I doubt that person thinks about Iraq at all anymore. After all, didn't the Iraq War end long ago? 

I KNOW, I HATE PUBLISHING ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON, but this is the sort of unfolding news that's central to FOREVER WARS' mission. I've got to go back to my other deadlines and responsibilities now. But if you value what we do, I am once again asking that you buy a subscription. For that matter, whether you buy a subscription or not, Sam has set up this tip-jar button, as we are not too proud to perform the journalistic equivalent of busking. 

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THE INDICTMENT OF NEW YORK MAYOR ERIC ADAMS but no time to say it. All I'll say for now is that you need to remember this mayoralty as proof of what happens when policemen govern. Adams is accused of defrauding the city for $10 million in baroque and occasionally hilarious ways. He was enabled in that fraud at every turn by political, business and media leaders who above all else fear the rule of the people of New York City, people who want to constrain the anti-democratic power of the NYPD—an NYPD that loots this city while opening fire on subway platforms to stop fare jumpers. [I used to volunteer at a Manhattan church ministry for homeless people—some of them had gone to prison for jumping the turnstile! Stealing $2.90 makes you a jailbird, but stealing ten million dollars makes you presidential timber, apparently.—Sam.] 

While colleagues of mine disagree, this statement by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday night read to me like Hochul telling Adams to quit in a few days or be fired. That would mean that, per the city charter, the Public Advocate will become mayor. Should that actually come to pass, it will mean my former city councilman, Jumaane Williams, will become mayor, and Williams would be the closest thing to a people's mayor since perhaps Fiorello LaGuardia 100 years ago. That would simply be the most ironic way for the downfall of Mayor Cop to proceed. Only in New York. Concrete jungle wet dream tomato. 

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No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.==