Pentagon to slash American navy presence in Iraq 10 years after anti-ISIS coalition fashioned

The U.S. military’s decade-long mission to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq will wind down over the next year and transition from an international coalition to a bilateral defense partnership between Washington and Baghdad, Biden administration officials confirmed Friday.

The move comes a decade after the U.S. assembled the joint task force, saying it was still needed to defeat the remnants of the Islamic State terror group that once held sway over nearly 8 million people living in 40,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria.

But the presence of U.S. troops has proved a headache for Iraq’s government and an occasional target of Shiite militias in Iraq that have strong ties to neighboring Iran. Iraqi government officials said earlier this month that the U.S. military mission would be significantly reduced by 2026, with perhaps a small force expected to remain in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Pentagon officials insisted the new arrangement does not mean a full withdrawal of the U.S. military presence in the country.

The U.S. has about 2,500 troops in Iraq advising and assisting Iraqi security forces in their campaign against ISIS. Biden administration officials said it makes sense to reassess the coalition’s mission in Iraq after 10 years.

On Friday, a senior administration official said President Biden discussed the transition in April at a meeting in Washington with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

“This is an evolution of the military mission in Iraq [but] the U.S. is not withdrawing from Iraq,” the official told Pentagon reporters.

Although the current deployment will conclude its work in Iraq in September 2025, the coalition’s anti-ISIS mission in Syria operating from bases inside Iraq’s Kurdish region — a deployment the Trump administration had tried to shut down — will continue until September 2026.

“While ISIS is down, they are not out. It continues to pose a real threat,” the senior administration official said. “We remain committed to defeating the core ISIS threat. We plan to continue focusing on that important task as we head into the future.”

The Biden administration won’t say how many American troops are expected to remain in Iraq with the new bilateral deal mission and whether any forces will be shifted to take part in the Syria-focused operation.

“The process is complex, and we’ll work together to ensure that every part of that transition is orderly and responsible,” a senior Defense Department official said. “We’ve seen very significant improvement in the Iraqi security force’s capability.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the U.S. is in Iraq at the express invitation of the government in Baghdad and the working partnership has led to success against ISIS on the battlefield.

“The strongholds that [the Islamic State group] has in Iraq, they don’t have anymore — or not what they’re used to,” Ms. Singh said Friday. “We certainly value the partnership that we had and continue to have with the Iraqi government.”

U.S. and Syrian Democratic Forces troops launched a raid into Syria earlier this month that killed four Islamic State operatives. it targeted the terror organization’s ability to attack innocent civilians, Biden administration officials said.

While weaker in the former “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State group continues to operate dangerous and growing operations in other theaters, including Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa.

“The U.S is the core [of the coalition] and we very much intend to prosecute this mission against ISIS over the coming years,” a senior administration official said.