Washington: The Pentagon promised in a statement on Tuesday to reduce its military mission in Iraq, a process that an American official said will see Baghdad command efforts to combat Daesh’s remains within his own country.
According to the plan, the United States and its coalition allies would focus on fighting Daesh’s remains in Syria and changing most of their staff to the Iraq Kurdistan region to carry out that mission, said the official, speaking under condition of anonymity.
The United States had approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq in early 2025 and more than 900 in Syria neighbor as part of the coalition formed in 2014 to combat Daesh while crawling through the two countries.
Once the transitions are completed, the total number of US forces in Iraq will add less than 2,000, and most of them will be in Erbil, said the official. A final number has not yet been determined, added the official, without offering a timeline.
The US troops left in Baghdad will focus on normal bilateral security cooperation problems, not on the fight against contractis.
“ISIS is no longer representing a sustained threat to the Iraq government or for the American homeland from the Iraqi territory. This is an important achievement that allows us to make the transition more responsible for the efforts of Iraq leading security in their own country,” said a senior defense official.
The agreement is an impulse for the government in Baghdad, which for a long time has worried that US troops can be a magnet for instability, often attacked by groups aligned by Iran.
The United States agreed last year with Iraq to leave the Ain Al-Asad air base in the province of West of Anbar and deliver it to Iraq. The United States official said the transition was still “in progress” and refused to offer more information.
Although the Trump administration has also outlined plans for a reduction in Syria, the official said it was based on conditions and “we continue in a kind of status quo situation” at this time.
The United States is concerned about the persistent presence of Daesh’s combatants in Syria, and the risk that thousands of prisons can be released.
The president of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al Qaeda leader, addressed the rebel forces that overthrew the Bashar Al-Assad government last year. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, met him in Riyadh in May.
The leaders of the Middle East and their western allies have warned that Daesh could exploit political instability in Syria to organize a return there.
