Washington, Baghdad clinch deal on US troop withdrawal from Iraq: Report

The US and Iraq have reached an agreement for the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Iraq, which would see hundreds of troops leave by September 2025 and the remainder by the end of 2026, according to a Western media report.

The Reuters news agency, quoting multiple unnamed sources within the governments of the US, Iraq, and other countries, said the withdrawal plan “has been broadly agreed but requires a final go-ahead from both capitals and an announcement date.”

"We have an agreement, it’s now just a question of when to announce it," Reuters quoted a senior US official.

An official announcement was initially scheduled for weeks ago but was postponed due to regional escalation related to Israel's genocidal onslaught on Gaza and to iron out some remaining details, the report quoted the sources as saying.

Farhad Alaaldin, foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, told the news agency that technical talks with Washington on the coalition drawdown had concluded.

"We are now on the brink of transitioning the relationship between Iraq and members of the international coalition to a new level, focusing on bilateral relations in military, security, economic, and cultural areas," he said.

According to the agency, the US and Iraq are also seeking to establish a new advisory relationship that could see some US troops remain in Iraq after the drawdown.

The agreement comes six months after Baghdad initiated talks with Washington on the withdrawal of US forces stationed at Iraqi bases.

Ain al-Assad attack marks new phase of 'escalation’ against American bases: Iraqi resistance

Iraq’s Islamic Resistance says a recent attack on the US-occupied Ain al-Assad Airbase in western Iraq marks a ”new phase of escalation against American bases.”

Those talks began after a wave of rocket and drone attacks on American forces in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for Washington’s support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza and its atrocities against the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi resistance groups have been pressing for an end to the presence of foreign forces in Iraq for more than a decade after a US-led coalition invaded the country in violation of international law based on false claims of it owning weapons of mass destruction.

There are nearly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria as part of what Washington claims to be a fighting force against Daesh.

The US has maintained its presence even after the Arab country and its allies, including Iran, vanquished the Takfiri terrorist group in late 2017.

In 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted for the expulsion of US forces. The vote came after Iran’s top anti-terror commander, martyr General Qassem Soleimani, and deputy PMU commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis were assassinated in a cowardly drone strike ordered by then-US president Donald Trump outside of the Baghdad airport.

On January 8, 2020, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) targeted the US-run Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq after launching a wave of attacks to retaliate for the assassination of the two top anti-terror commanders.

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