US official says no "official announcement" despite reports on withdrawal from Iraq by 2025
Shafaq News/ The United States has agreed to withdraw hundreds of American-led troops from Iraq but an official announcement is yet to be made by Washington, Newsweek reported on Saturday.
The decision comes after months of talks between the two countries and follows a series of attacks on U.S. troops by Iran-backed militants.
Under the deal, which is still subject to final confirmation, hundreds of troops would leave Iraq by September 2025, including all coalition forces in the Ain Al-Asad airbase in the western Anbar province and a significant number in the capital city of Baghdad.
Some US and other coalition troops are expected to remain in Erbil, in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region, until around the end of 2026 while they continue operations against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in Syria.
A US Department of Defense official told Newsweek, "We have no new announcements to make at this time."
There are currently about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 in neighboring Syria.
"We have an agreement; it's now just a question of when to announce it," a senior U.S. official told the U.S.-based media outlet.
According to several sources, the new agreement between Washington and Baghdad will be announced this month.
The U.S. initially invaded Iraq in 2003 as part of its "War on Terror" following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda. In 2011, American troops withdrew from Iraq but came back in 2014 as the leader of a coalition to fight ISIS, which included German, French, Spanish, and Italian troops.
Talks between Baghdad and Washington that led to this reported new agreement were initiated by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in January amid attacks by Iran-backed militants on U.S. troops.
On January 27, three U.S. military personnel were killed and dozens more were injured in a drone strike "carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq," President Joe Biden said at the time. The U.S. retaliated with strikes targeting 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militants.
Farhad Alaaldin, foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, was tight-lipped on the details of the reported agreement, but told Reuters, "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."
