BAGHDAD: U.S. forces are set to withdraw from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday, a departure that Iran and its allies are celebrating as a victory and that Iraqi security experts warn could hand Tehran deeper influence while allowing Islamic State to regroup.
The withdrawal, agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by the Trump administration even as it wages war against Iran, ends a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. About 4,500 Americans died in more than two decades of war in Iraq.
Iraqi security analysts say the coalition's departure removes a counterweight to Iran's influence in a country where Tehran-backed Shiite militias already hold significant political and military power.
"Iran stands to benefit strategically from the coalition's departure because it removes a military presence that for years acted as a counterweight to Tehran's influence in Iraq," said Jasim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi security analyst who studies armed Shiite groups aligned with Iran.
He predicted that pro-Iranian militia groups would portray the withdrawal as a victory for their movement and "seek to translate that momentum into greater influence over security and political decision-making."
Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, called the U.S. withdrawal "a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and honorable Iraqis, and a crushing defeat for the American project."
"On September 30, we will celebrate the turning of a black page in Iraq's history and the failure of the occupation to impose its will on our country," he told Reuters. "Iraq has proven that its sovereignty cannot be secured by foreign forces, but by the resistance and the will of its people."
'Not Fully Ready'
While the eventual departure of U.S. forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, those who worry about the strength of Iran-backed groups fear the withdrawal is premature.
"We believe Iraq is still not fully ready to take over the security file at this time," Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, once a bastion of anti-American resistance, told Reuters.
"All Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty, and no Iraqi would dispute that. But I believe that the (U.S.-led coalition) leaving in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear."
American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam, a Sunni Muslim dictator, and went on to occupy the country, install a Shiite-led government and fight a years-long counterinsurgency before withdrawing at the end of 2011.
They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group Islamic State in a major war from 2014 to 2017.
Around twice as many Americans died in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
In recent years, Iraq has been the only country to maintain close political and military alliances with both the United States and Iran, which sometimes used Iraqi territory as a proxy battlefield.
The United States killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in a strike on Baghdad Airport in 2020. Iran's allies repeatedly fired on U.S. bases, sometimes drawing reprisals.
In this year's war against Iran, seven of the 18 U.S. service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an Army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.
Victory for Iran's 'Axis of Resistance'
Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for its "axis of resistance" of allied armed groups across the region.
"Lasting security will prevail in Iraq" once the Americans leave the country and the region, Amir Hayat Moqaddam, deputy chairman of the National Security Commission of Iran's Parliament, said Monday.
Iran "welcomes the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and will undoubtedly support it," he told Iran's parliamentary news service. "Resistance groups are currently taking action, sometimes targeting and confronting American troops."
Washington has accused Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq of playing a role in the wider Middle East conflict by launching attacks on neighboring countries at Tehran's direction, most recently hitting a major Saudi oil pipeline this month. The Baghdad government says it is trying to curb their influence.
