U.S. completes withdrawal from Iraq today after 23 years of military presence, Tehran calls it a victory

U.S. forces are withdrawing this Wednesday from the last bases they hold in Iraq.

The withdrawal, claimed as a victory by Tehran and its allies, was agreed in 2024 under the presidency of Joe Biden and is being implemented by the administration of Donald Trump, at a time when the United States is waging war against Iran.

It comes 23 years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces, a development that triggered unrest and chaos, culminating in the rise of the Islamic State.

Now, Iran has gradually consolidated its influence through allied armed groups.

Although the withdrawal of U.S. forces is generally popular among Iraqis, some worry that the U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded security forces are still unable to defend the country, where 4,500 American soldiers have died in more than 20 years of war.

“The lesson of the last two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous,” said Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst and adviser to the security forces.

After the 2003 invasion by U.S. forces, the United States occupied the country, installed a Shia government and fought an insurgency, first from Saddam’s supporters and later from al-Qaeda, for years, as a sectarian civil war plunged Iraq into chaos. U.S. forces withdrew at the end of 2011.

They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the jihadist group Islamic State, which had terrorised millions of people, in a major war that lasted from 2014 to 2017.

Many Americans died in Operation Iraqi Freedom compared with the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with the abrupt U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

In this year’s conflict with Iran, seven of the 18 American soldiers recorded as dead were in Iraq. The last was an army sergeant who was killed in July during the controlled crash of a drone at a base near Erbil.

Iran, which says its ultimate goal is to force U.S. forces to withdraw from the entire Middle East, presents the American withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for the so-called “axis of resistance,” that is, the network of armed organisations cooperating with Tehran across the region.

“The concern is not so much the possibility of direct Iranian intervention, but the possibility that Iran’s allies will feel increasingly free to move. These groups could try to expand their role in shaping state policies and consolidate their presence in key institutions,” said Ahmed Younis, a Baghdad-based political analyst.