The U.S. military will leave Iraq by Sept. 30, American and Iraqi officials said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump, standing alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi at the White House, said "we don't think we need the military there anymore" and "The relationship is a whole big relationship where we don't need the military." al-Zaidi, speaking through an interpreter, said "U.S. forces will be out of Iraq" by Sept. 30, "while U.S. companies will be inside Iraq."
The Pentagon said in a subsequent statement that it was reaffirming a 2024 agreement with Iraq to end its mission against IS fighters.
The United States has been shifting the burden for combating IS in Iraq from American and coalition forces to Iraqi troops who have been trained by the U.S. military, and American troops have been diminishing their footprint, withdrawing from areas and consolidating forces.
Officials said the withdrawal follows a 23-year presence that started with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, a massive "shock and awe" bombing campaign that laid waste to large sections of the country and paved the way for American ground troops to converge on Baghdad. The invasion was based on what turned out to be faulty claims that Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction, and such weapons never materialized.
The U.S. presence grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007. The Obama administration negotiated the drawdown, and in December 2011 the final combat troops departed, leaving a small number of personnel to staff an office of security assistance and a detachment of Marines to guard the embassy compound.
In 2014 the rise of the Islamic State group and its rapid capture of territory across Iraq and Syria brought U.S. and partner nation forces back at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help rebuild and retrain police and military units; after IS lost its territorial hold, coalition military operations ended in 2021. The U.S. had maintained about 2,500 troops in Iraq for training and partnered counter-IS operations, and many have withdrawn since the 2024 agreement to end the mission, leaving just a small contingent of military advisers and others still remaining in Iraq.