American forces are on track to leave Iraq entirely by the end of September, closing out a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion, but counterterrorism experts warn ISIS is quietly rebuilding in the vacuum.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. Central Command, met Wednesday to confirm the timeline. Al-Zaidi's office issued a statement afterward calling September 30 the "fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces." A U.S. official separately confirmed the pullout remains on schedule.
The withdrawal caps a phased drawdown that Washington and Baghdad agreed to in 2024. U.S. troops pulled out of bases across most of Iraq over the past year. The last significant pocket of American forces, stationed mostly at Harir Air Base in Erbil, in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, began packing up roughly three weeks ago, AP News reported, citing two Iraqi Kurdish officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
How many troops remain in Iraq right now is unclear. The U.S. official declined to provide a number or say where departing forces would be redeployed. The New York Post reported approximately 2,000 American service members were still stationed in the country as of mid-July, the vast majority in the Kurdish north.
The arc of the American military commitment in Iraq stretches across four presidencies and more than two decades. At the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007, more than 170,000 U.S. troops were on the ground. The last combat forces departed in December 2011.
Three years later, the Islamic State tore across Iraq and Syria, seizing vast swaths of territory and prompting the Iraqi government to invite American forces back. The coalition campaign that followed eventually stripped ISIS of every square mile it once held, and coalition military operations formally ended in 2021.
After that, roughly 2,500 troops stayed behind for training missions and residual counter-ISIS operations. The 2024 agreement between Washington and Baghdad set the terms for winding those down for good. Al-Zaidi, during a White House visit in July, told reporters through a translator: "On the 30th of September, the US forces will be out of Iraq, while these companies will be inside Iraq."
The withdrawal aligns with the broader push by the Trump administration to reposition American forces across the Middle East. That effort has drawn both praise and friction on Capitol Hill, including sharp criticism from Republican senators over the pace and scope of drawdowns elsewhere.
The official U.S. line is confident. The unnamed U.S. official framed the pullout as a success story, stating that "the United States, Iraq and coalition partners have achieved tremendous success in defeating ISIS" and that Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga, "will lead the fight against terrorists in Iraq."
Not everyone shares that confidence. Dr. Omar Mohammed, a researcher with George Washington University's Program on Extremism, warned Fox News that the terror group is positioning itself to exploit the departure. "ISIS is waiting actively in the gaps, as it historically always has," Mohammed said.
The numbers back up the concern. ISIS fighter strength in Syria has reportedly surged from around 2,000 to as many as 10,000 since the collapse of the Assad government in 2024. That growth happened while American forces were still in the region. What happens after they leave is an open question no official has answered clearly.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has faced sustained scrutiny over military readiness during this period of transition. Questions about his standing at the Pentagon have persisted in Washington, though President Trump has repeatedly expressed confidence in his leadership.
The September 30 date carries a second meaning inside Iraq. Al-Zaidi set the same deadline for the country's non-state armed groups to surrender their weapons, arguing they will have no justification to carry arms once foreign troops are gone.
That demand is aimed squarely at Iran-backed militias, the most powerful paramilitary forces in the country. Some of them have already said publicly they have no intention of disarming. The Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of predominantly Iran-backed armed groups, number approximately 238,000 members and receive billions in Iraqi government funding, Just The News noted.
Mohammed put the bind plainly: "Sept. 30 is not one deadline; it is two." The U.S. withdrawal and the militia disarmament push expire on the same day. One is almost certain to happen. The other, by every available indication, is not.
The situation in the Kurdish north adds another layer of uncertainty. Bases in the region have regularly come under attack since the U.S. and Israel launched military operations against Iran on February 28. The article does not detail the scale or frequency of those strikes, but the fact that the last American forces in Iraq are drawing down from an active threat environment underscores the operational complexity.
Trump has publicly backed his defense team through a series of difficult decisions on force posture in the Middle East, and the Iraq withdrawal represents one of the clearest deliverables of his second-term foreign policy.
Several critical questions remain open. No official has said where departing troops will go next. No one has disclosed how many Americans are still on the ground. And no one has explained what specific mechanisms the Iraqi government has to compel heavily armed, Iranian-funded militias to lay down their weapons by a date now less than two months away.
The broader political environment around military leadership continues to churn. Reports have surfaced in recent months about internal administration debates over defense and intelligence leadership, though the Iraq withdrawal itself appears to have bipartisan operational support.
Iraq's security forces have improved dramatically since the dark days of 2014, when entire divisions collapsed in the face of the ISIS advance. Whether they can hold the line without American support, while powerful militias refuse to disarm and ISIS quietly rebuilds across the border, is the question that September 30 will begin to answer.
Getting American troops out of Iraq is the right instinct. Leaving behind a security vacuum that lets the next threat metastasize unchecked is how we ended up going back the last time.