Iraq says September 30 withdrawal deadline for US-led coalition ‘final’

A US official confirmed that the United States expects to complete its pullout by September 30, AP reported.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has said that the September 30 deadline for ending the US-led international coalition’s military mission in Iraq and completing the withdrawal of its forces is “fixed and final”.

The remarks on Wednesday came after al-Zaidi’s meeting with US Central Command Commander General Brad Cooper, the Iraqi prime minister’s office said in a post on X.

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The withdrawal would mark the end of a presence that started with the 2003 US-led invasion against Saddam Hussein. In 2024, Washington and Baghdad agreed to wind down the much smaller US-led operations against the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.

“September 30 will be the fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces,” said the statement from the prime minister’s office.

“October 1 will mark a new day in the trajectory of the Iraqi state, as Iraq will be free of any foreign military presence,” it added.

Placing all weapons under exclusive state control “represents an essential prerequisite for moving Iraq into a new phase of development and prosperity”, the statement read.

The office added that both sides agreed to the deadline of the mission, as discussed during al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington, DC, in mid-July.

Al-Zaidi and Cooper stressed that Iraqi-US ties would shift toward economic and security cooperation based on mutual respect for sovereignty and shared interests, it added.

A US official told The Associated Press news agency that the US expects to complete its pullout by September 30, but declined to say how many troops remain in Iraq or where they would be redeployed.

“The United States, Iraq and coalition partners have achieved tremendous success in defeating ISIS and now the Iraqi security forces, including the Peshmerga and other Iraqi Kurdistan Region security forces, will lead the fight against terrorists in Iraq,” the official said, The AP reported.

US troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region.

Bases there have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28.

The US presence in Iraq grew to more than 170,000 troops at the peak of counterinsurgency operations in 2007.

In December 2011, the final combat troops departed. But in 2014, the rise of the ISIL group and its capture of a wide swath across Iraq and Syria brought US forces back at the Iraqi government’s invitation.

After ISIL lost its hold on territory it once claimed, coalition military operations ended in 2021.