The US Left Iraq. Now the Real Battle for Baghdad Begins

The Last Base, the Empty Chair

On a Wednesday in September 2026, the last US soldiers walked out of their remaining bases in Iraq. Twenty-three years after the barrels of American tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border and toppled Saddam Hussein, the United States was leaving — again.

The departure was orderly, staged, and almost entirely uncontested. That is the most unsettling part.

There were no last-minute firefights, no dramatic standoffs at the gates. The Iraqi government, which has long demanded the withdrawal, got what it wanted. Iran, which has spent two decades working toward this moment, celebrated a victory. And the United States? It walked away from a country where 4,500 American service members died, leaving behind equipment, infrastructure, and — critically — a gap that no one seems confident anyone can fill.

The Iran Angle Everyone Misses

The headline narrative is simple: US troops leave, Iran gains. But the real story is more insidious than a territorial swap. What Iran gains is not land or bases — it is influence that operates in the spaces between institutions.

Ahmed Younis, a Baghdad-based political analyst, put it plainly: the concern is not direct Iranian military intervention. It is the emboldening of Iran’s proxies to expand their role in shaping Iraqi state policy and consolidating their presence inside key institutions — ministries, security agencies, provincial governments.

This is how imperial influence dies and regional hegemony takes its place. Not with marching columns, but with quietly placed loyalists in budget committees and internal security directorates. The US military presence was a visible deterrent. Its absence is an invitation.

Iran has said its ultimate aim is to force American forces out of the entire Middle East. Iraq was always the first domino. Now it has fallen.

ISIS Is Sleeping, Not Dead

The Islamic State group lost its self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago. Its leaders were hunted down. Its territory was carved apart. But the group never disappeared — it went dormant.

US forces had been providing Iraqi security forces with critical intelligence on ISIS movements, aerial surveillance, and reconnaissance. Remove that layer, and a sleeper cell network that spans the country’s vast Sunni heartland becomes significantly harder to track.

Retired Iraqi Army General Mohammed al-Jubouri, who led a brigade in the war against ISIS, warned of a worst-case scenario: the militants obtaining armed drones or improvised explosive drones at a time when Iraq still lacks sufficient air defense capabilities to counter them. This is not speculative fantasy. It is a material assessment from a man who fought these fighters on the ground.

The math is brutal. In the 2014–2017 conflict, ISIS at its height occupied a third of Iraq. Hundreds of people were killed inside a former US military base, their executions filmed. The coalition that defeated them depended heavily on American intelligence and air power. That coalition is now gone.

The Iraqi Security Forces Dilemma

Here is what English-language coverage of this withdrawal tends to flatten: the Iraqi security forces were trained, equipped, and sustained by the United States. They are now expected to operate without the very ecosystem that made them functional.

Jassim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi analyst who advises the security forces, did not mince words: “The lesson from the past two decades is that security vacuums can be extremely dangerous.”

The withdrawal was agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration — even as Washington wages war against Iran itself. That contradiction is not accidental. It reflects a US strategy that wants to reduce its footprint in Iraq while simultaneously containing Iranian expansion elsewhere. But the two objectives pull in opposite directions. You cannot train an Iraqi army to be self-reliant and then remove the trainers.

The Kurdish Question Lurks Below

The last US service member killed in this year’s conflict with Iran was an army sergeant who died in July during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil — in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. That detail matters.

The Kurdish region has long served as a staging ground for US operations in northern Iraq. Its handover to Baghdad, reported separately by Turkey, signals another shift in the balance of power. The Kurds have been a reliable American partner. With US forces exiting, their leverage over Baghdad diminishes precisely when they may need it most.

Who Wins, Who Loses, What Comes Next

Iran wins. Its proxies gain room to maneuver inside Iraqi institutions without the countervailing pressure of a Western military presence. The group’s strategic depth — its ability to operate across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond — is reinforced.

ISIS wins by default. Not through any action of its own, but because the surveillance and intelligence architecture that contained it has been dismantled.

The Iraqi government wins on its own terms — sovereignty restored, foreign troops gone. But governance is not the same as security. A government that cannot protect its borders, its cities, or its institutions from internal and external actors is winning the wrong kind of victory.

The United States wins the optics of departure without absorbing the risks of presence. But the cost will be measured in the years ahead — in attacks that require a US response it no longer has the footprint to mount quickly, in Iranian entrenchment that can only be reversed through sanctions, diplomacy, or force, all of which are more expensive than keeping troops in place.

The year’s conflict with Iran claimed 7 of 18 US service members listed as killed. The last died in Iraq. The withdrawal does not erase that sacrifice. But it does raise the question: was it spent to create a emptier, not a safer, Middle East?

The answer, so far, is yes.