Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As they did in Afghanistan in 2021 and trapped Islamabad in Kabul, the US and its allied forces left Iran on Wednesday similarly, trapping Tehran in Baghdad, the media reported on Wednesday.
After 20 years of their occupation of Afghanistan as part of the War on Terror, the United States and allied forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan in August 2021, leaving behind a lot of arms and ammunition which the returning Taliban have since been using against Pakistan. Their exit followed a 2020 agreement signed by the US and the Taliban.
Reacting to the US forces’ withdrawal on Wednesday from Iraq as well, Iraqi security experts say it could give Tehran and its allies free rein, while also allowing other US enemies to stage a comeback, including Islamic State, when the Sunnis and Shias in the volatile West Asia (Middle East) are pitted against each other.
Iran-supporting Shia Muslims make up an estimated 70 per cent of Iraq’s population, forming the largest religious demographic in the country. With Iran and Iraq’s Shias forming a solid block of nearly 90 million the ongoing war in the region is likely to intensify further.
US withdrawal
More than two decades after the western Iraqi city of Falluja became a major centre of resistance to US-led forces in Iraq, residents are concerned about their security as the US-led coalition withdraw.
They pulled out from their last bases in Iraq on Wednesday, a departure celebrated as a victory by Iran and its allies who now have deep influence in the country where around 4,500 Americans died during more than two decades of war.
Iraqi security experts say the withdrawal – agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump’s administration even as it wages war against Iran – could give Tehran and its allies free rein, while also allowing other US enemies to stage a comeback, including Islamic State.
“Iran stands to benefit strategically from the coalition’s departure because it removes a military presence that for years acted as a counterweight to Tehran’s influence in Iraq,” said Jasim al-Bahadli, an Iraqi security analyst specialising in studying armed Shiite groups aligned with Iran.
According to him, the pro-Iranian militia groups of Iraq would not only portray the departure as a victory for their movement, but also “seek to translate that momentum into greater influence over security and political decision-making.”
Premature withdrawal
While the departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, those who worry about the strength of the Iran-backed groups fear it is premature.
“We believe Iraq is still not fully ready to take over the security file at this time,” Abdulrahman al-Zobaie, a Sunni tribal leader in Fallujah, once a bastion of anti-American resistance, was quoted as saying.
“All Iraqis aspire to full sovereignty, and no Iraqi would dispute that. But I believe that the (US-led coalition) leaving in this way and creating a vacuum is what all Iraqis fear.”
American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein of the Shia-dominated country, and went on to occupy the country, install a Shiite-led government and fight a years-long counterinsurgency before withdrawing at the end of 2011.
They returned less than three years later to help Iraqi forces defeat the dreaded Sunni militant group Islamic State in a major war from 2014 to 2017.
Around twice as many Americans died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” as in the parallel war in Afghanistan, which ended with an abrupt US withdrawal in 2021.
In recent years, Iraq has been the only country to maintain close political and military alliances with both the United States and Iran, which sometimes used Iraqi territory as a proxy battlefield.
The US killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, with a strike on Baghdad Airport in 2020.
In the ongoing US war against Iran, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July 2026.
Axis of Resistance
Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American troops to pull out of the entire West Asia, casts the US withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for its “axis of resistance” of allied armed groups across the region, including Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hamas (Gaza), and the Houthis (Yemen).
“Lasting security will prevail in Iraq” once the Americans leave the country and the region, the deputy chairman of the National Security Commission of Iran’s Parliament, Amir Hayat Moqaddam, said on Monday.
Iran “welcomes the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and will undoubtedly support it,” he told Iran’s parliamentary news service. “Resistance groups are currently taking action, sometimes targeting and confronting American troops.”
Washington has accused Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq of playing a role in the wider West Asia conflict by launching attacks on neighbouring countries at the direction of Tehran, most recently hitting a major Saudi oil pipeline this month. The Baghdad government says it is trying to curb their influence.
Islamic State 2.0?
Some Iraqi security officials, both in the federal government and the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, say the US pullout also risks giving new life to Islamic State fighters, who, despite the defeat of their self-proclaimed caliphate nearly a decade ago, retain a sleeper cell network.
At their height, their fighters occupied a third of Iraq and killed thousands of people, including hundreds they videotaped themselves gunning down inside a former US military base.
A lack of US intelligence, logistical support and drones will give Islamic State a chance to regroup, said Kurdish commander Sirwan Barzani.
“For more than two weeks, we have noticed movement by (Islamic State) sleeper cells, after it was announced in the general media that there will be an official withdrawal of the international coalition from Iraq by the end of September,” he said. “This has boosted, in my opinion, the morale” of the fighters.
Iraqi security forces said a suspected Islamic State cell was preparing suicide attacks to coincide with the pullout. The plot highlighted concerns that the militant group remains capable of exploiting security gaps despite years of military setbacks, said four Iraqi security and army officials.
Islamic State “is seeking to send a message that the group is still powerful and capable of launching bloody attacks,” said Colonel Khalid al-Bayati, a senior security official in the strategic oil town of Kirkuk.