The last American troops departed Iraq by Wednesday, September 30, formally closing a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein and resumed in 2014 when U.S.-led coalition forces returned to help Iraqi forces defeat the Islamic State. The withdrawal was negotiated in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by the Trump administration, which is simultaneously conducting military operations against Iran in the Arabian Sea under Operation Epic Fury. The departure marks the end of a engagement that cost 4,492 American lives during Operation Iraqi Freedom and another 123 during the subsequent campaign against ISIS, known as Operation Inherent Resolve.

Iran and its allied militia factions immediately claimed the withdrawal as a strategic victory. Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, called it "a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and a crushing defeat for the American project." Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had told U.S. lawmakers in July that America remains Baghdad's "most important strategic partner" and that after September 30 Iraq's federal forces would be capable of protecting the country without armed factions.

Iraqi security analysts and Sunni community leaders have raised concerns that the departure is premature and could leave a dangerous power vacuum. Jasim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi security analyst who specializes in Shia armed groups, said the withdrawal removes a military counterweight to Tehran's influence and predicted that pro-Iranian militias would seek to convert the momentum into greater control over security and political decision-making. Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, said that while all Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty, "the coalition leaving in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear."

The broader strategic consequences are significant. Iran-backed political movements and armed groups have steadily expanded their influence in Iraq since the 2003 removal of Saddam Hussein, whose government had fought Iran in a brutal eight-year war. The collapse of Iraqi security forces before ISIS in 2014 created a further opening for Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, which became central to the fight against the extremists and have since embedded themselves in Iraqi political and military structures. Security experts warn the withdrawal could also allow the Islamic State, now reduced largely to sleeper cells, an opportunity to reconstitute amid reduced oversight.

The Iraq withdrawal, coming five years after the similarly abrupt U.S. exit from Afghanistan in 2021, closes both of the so-called post-September 11 "forever wars." Iraqi civilian deaths from direct violence during the 2003–2011 occupation are conservatively estimated between 180,000 and 210,000, with hundreds of thousands more believed to have died indirectly from the collapse of healthcare and infrastructure. The full geopolitical impact of the withdrawal will be shaped in part by the ongoing U.S. military campaign against Iran, two carrier strike groups currently operating in the Arabian Sea as the last American forces leave Iraqi soil.