The Last American Troops Have Left Iraq: Your Briefing
The Pentagon said the final US forces completed an orderly departure from Iraq through the Erbil Air Base, ending the ground mission against the Islamic State. It closes a campaign that began in 2014 and leaves no American troops on Iraqi soil.
The pullout is both a milestone and a gamble. It honors a promise to end a long deployment, but it removes the Kurdish-based counterweight to both an Iranian-aligned government in Baghdad and an Islamic State that is regrouping next door in Syria.
What happened
The mission in Iraq is over. The Pentagon announced the completion of the withdrawal, framing it as a transition from a wartime coalition to an Iraqi-led security effort.
Erbil was the exit point. The final forces consolidated and departed from Erbil Air Base in the Kurdistan region, the main US hub after the earlier drawdown.
The fight is not finished everywhere. The broader counter-Islamic State operation continues in Syria, with its task force headquarters relocated to Jordan and hundreds of US troops still deployed
By the numbers
- Zero troops remain in Iraq. It is the second time the US has fully withdrawn from the country, after the prior presence had drawn down from roughly 2,500 in recent years.
- The war’s human cost was steep. About 4,400 American service members were killed across the Iraq War, with the US presence peaking near 170,000 troops in 2007.
- The dollar cost dwarfs the mission. The full Iraq War since 2003 has cost close to $2 trillion, by the Watson Institute’s Costs of War accounting.
Worth watching
The Kurds are now exposed. Regional officials warn the departure leaves Kurdistan open to Iranian pressure and an Islamic State resurgence, the two threats the US footprint had hedged against.
ISIS is rebuilding next door. Fighters in Syria have grown from roughly 2,000 to about 10,000 since the Assad government’s 2024 collapse, undercutting the claim that the group is finished.
Iran gains the most. With the Kurdish-based counterweight gone, Tehran’s aligned militias in Iraq face one less check.
In Their Own Words
“This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region.” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell, who added that the US will continue targeted training and intelligence support to prevent the group’s return.
What The Other Side Is Doing And How To Neutralize It
Prediction markets are betting on a busy year for American force, not a quiet one: the Kalshi market on how many countries the US will conduct military action against in 2026 puts the most likely answer at eight countries, near 66 percent, even as Iraq comes off the list. That tension is what the withdrawal exposes. The antiwar left and the libertarian right both cheer the exit, but the money and the manpower are flowing to Iran’s advantage, with an estimated 238,000 fighters in Iraq’s Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces now facing fewer constraints.
For readers who want the serious version of this debate, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, through analysts like Bradley Bowman, has argued consistently that premature withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan catalyze exactly the resurgence the US then has to return and fight. The Institute for the Study of War tracks the Iran-militia and ISIS order of battle in near-real time, and FDD’s Long War Journal catalogs the attacks the headlines miss.
For a donor who cares whether this withdrawal ages well, the leverage is funding the organizations that will document an ISIS comeback early, while it can still be answered with intelligence and training rather than another deployment, and supporting the Kurdish partners the US is now leaving to hold the line alone.
How it stands
Ending a twelve-year mission is the kind of promise politicians of both parties have made for a decade, and there is an honest case that an Iraqi-led security effort is where this always had to go. But a withdrawal is a bet about the future, and this one is being placed at a bad table.
The Islamic State is growing in Syria, Iran’s militias are stronger in Baghdad, and the Kurds who did the most of the fighting are the most exposed by the leaving. The measure of this decision will not be the flag-lowering ceremony at Erbil. It will be whether the United States has to come back. A war declared over is not the same as a war won, and the difference, as the last two decades taught at great cost, is usually paid for later.
Facts are prickly things,
-The Editors
National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · October 1, 2026
