The United States will complete the withdrawal of its military forces from Iraq by 30 September, President Donald Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi announced during a White House meeting on Tuesday. The Pentagon subsequently confirmed that the move reaffirms a bilateral agreement reached in 2024 to conclude the US-led mission against the Islamic State group. The departure of the remaining contingent of military advisers brings to a close a 23-year American troop presence that began with the 2003 invasion, launched on the basis of claims—later found to be incorrect—that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, peaked at over 170,000 soldiers during the 2007 counterinsurgency surge, and was later reconstituted in 2014 to combat the Islamic State group.

Viewed from Washington, the withdrawal signals a deliberate pivot from a security-focused relationship to an economic partnership. Mr Trump stated that the US “doesn’t think we need the military there anymore” and highlighted growing ties with American oil companies, promising “a lot of deals” and job creation. From Baghdad’s perspective, Mr al-Zaidi described the visit as the start of a new “economic partnership” and declared that “US forces will be out of Iraq, while US companies will be inside Iraq.” The Iraqi leader also used the occasion to press for a higher crude production quota within OPEC, arguing that his country requires a “fair share” to finance reconstruction after conflicts with the Islamic State group inflicted damage exceeding $400 billion. He separately pledged to disarm all armed factions operating in Iraq by the same September deadline, though he offered no details on how that would be achieved. Iran-backed armed groups, according to regional media, had already rejected any outcomes from the prime minister’s visit before it began.

The announcement unfolds against the backdrop of a wider regional war. Since late February, a conflict pitting the United States and Israel against Iran has drawn in multiple fronts, including Iraq, while Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has severely disrupted Iraqi energy exports—around 90 per cent of the country’s 3.4 million barrels per day of fossil fuel shipments transit the waterway. The economic strain reinforces Baghdad’s urgency to attract US investment and secure higher oil revenues. The military drawdown itself is not a sudden rupture: the 2024 agreement, negotiated during the Biden administration, had already set the withdrawal in motion, and many of the roughly 2,500 troops stationed in Iraq at the time have since departed. Responsibility for counter-IS operations has progressively shifted to Iraqi security forces trained by the US-led coalition.

The dossier now moves toward implementation. The Pentagon is expected to complete the withdrawal by the end of September, while Iraqi authorities face the parallel challenge of disarming militias and managing the economic fallout of the regional conflict. Several oil and gas agreements are anticipated to be signed during Mr al-Zaidi’s visit, according to Iraqi government statements. The prime minister’s call for a revised OPEC quota introduces a new variable into the cartel’s internal deliberations, though no formal decision has been scheduled. The transition marks a reconfiguration of the US-Iraq relationship, with security responsibilities formally handed to Baghdad even as American commercial interests deepen.