Iraq Prime Minister Says U.S.-Led Military Coalition in Iraq Is No Longer Needed
U.S. warns departure could strengthen Islamic State and add to Mideast turmoil
The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 2024
Iraq’s prime minister said the U.S.-led military coalition that has been helping his country fight Islamic State militants is no longer needed, though he still wants strong ties with Washington.
“We believe the justifications for the international coalition have ended,” Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani told The Wall Street Journal, as the war in Gaza frays Iraqi relations with Washington.
Sudani didn’t set a deadline for the departure of the coalition, which was formed in 2014 to mentor and support Iraqi forces in regaining control of their country after Islamic State militants seized swaths of northern and western Iraq.
Nor did Sudani close the door to a role for U.S. troops advising Iraqi forces to remain in the country under a new bilateral relationship that he said should follow.
But in an interview Tuesday during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sudani expressed broad dissatisfaction with American policy on the Gaza conflict. The West had turned a blind eye toward the plight of the Palestinians before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, he said, calling for increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end what he described as genocide.
While Sudani condemned the frequent attacks by Iranian-backed militias on American forces in his country, he also assailed a recent U.S. drone strike in Baghdad against a militia leader as a “clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
U.S. officials say that some adjustments to the international coalition, which includes about 900 troops from two dozen countries along with a contingent of 2,500 American troops, may be in order. But they have also warned that a premature withdrawal of American and foreign troops would add to the instability in the Middle East by reducing international support for the still-deficient Iraqi forces and providing an opportunity for Islamic State to attempt a comeback.
Sudani said that he was no longer worried that the departure of the coalition would undermine Iraqi military capabilities.
“There is no cause for concern, as we have capable security forces that can control all areas of Iraq,” he said. “The Iraqi-Syrian border is under complete control.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on Sudani’s statements but said the Iraqi government hadn’t made any official requests for U.S. forces to leave.
“We continue to see ISIS as an international and a regional threat, and so we can’t take our eye off the ball,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman. “At the end of the day, again, we are in Iraq at the invitation of the government of Iraq, and we’ll continue to consult closely with this valued and important partner.”
The call for the departure of the U.S.-led coalition is a shift for Sudani, who said last year in an interview with the Journal that foreign troops were still necessary to train and assist Iraqi units in countering Islamic State, though not to participate in combat.
The change underscores the heightened pressure on Sudani since the start of the Gaza war from hard-liners in Iraq, many backed by Tehran, who have stepped up calls for U.S. troops to leave. But it also reflects the desire of some Iraqi officials and commanders to maintain a robust relationship with the U.S. military, which can provide capabilities and resources that Iraqi forces can’t match on their own.
By calling for replacing the coalition with a bilateral relationship with Washington, Sudani can highlight his role in negotiating a departure of foreign forces while keeping an as-yet undefined military relationship with the U.S. that could include keeping American troops indefinitely, analysts said.
“He wants to shore up his flank with Iran and their proxies but at the same time he recognizes that his government can’t continue without support from the U.S. and its coalition,” said a former senior U.S. official. The Iraqi leader is walking a political tightrope between Tehran and Washington, the official added, and “he is trapped in a bad place.”
Farhad Alaadin, Sudani’s diplomatic adviser, said Iraq wasn’t seeking a rapid departure of American forces.
“The goal is not to get the U.S. out,” he said. “We need to agree to establish a timetable for changing the coalition to a bilateral relationship.”
Sudani was mostly unknown in the West when he took office in 2022 and has sought to broaden his outreach to the Biden administration and other Western governments in hopes of attracting investment and aid, as well as to counter criticism that his government is too closely aligned with Iran.
His room to maneuver has been limited by Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Shia cleric who can mobilize thousands of protesters and armed militia members against the government. Sudani has also worked to retain support of the Coordination Framework, a group of mostly Shiite parties and factions that backed him for prime minister and which is supported by Iran. The bloc controls the most seats in parliament and several key ministries in his cabinet.
The small American deployment in Iraq is a far cry from the 170,000 troops the U.S. military had in the country when it battled Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in 2007 during the nearly eight-year American occupation.
Yet the modest U.S. military presence, which operates mostly within the confines of large bases in the country, has become a cornerstone of the U.S. security posture in the region. U.S. forces provide vital logistical support for the approximately 900 American troops in neighboring Syria who are working with local partners battling remnants of Islamic State.
They also advise the Iraqi Security Forces on finding targets, the use of artillery, air operations, logistics and command and control in their continuing fight against the terrorist group. For example, Iraq’s air force relies on reconnaissance by the U.S.-led coalition to find targets, according to a Pentagon report issued last year.
Beyond that, the effort to strengthen ties between the American defense establishment and its Iraqi counterpart is part of an effort to counter Tehran’s long-held agenda of trying to pressure the U.S. military to leave the Middle East.
The departure of the U.S.-led coalition could also diminish support for the Iraqi military in other ways. More than $300 million was appropriated by Congress for the 2023 fiscal year to equip and train Iraqi forces for their counter-Islamic State missions.
“It’s imperative that the U.S. maintain at least a minimum security presence in Iraq to mentor, advise and train the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service and the upper levels of the Iraqi Security Forces in general,” said David Witty, a retired Army Special Forces colonel who advised the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service. “They are still not fully capable and remain reliant on the U.S. and other coalition partners for some support.”
In August, senior Iraqi security officials visited the Pentagon, and the two sides issued a joint statement that called for convening a “higher military commission” to discuss the future of the U.S.-led coalition based on the threat from Islamic State, operational requirements and the capability of Iraqi forces.
U.S. and Iraqi officials were days away from convening those high-level talks when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, upending those plans.
Ten days later, Iranian-backed militias broke a six-month truce with the Americans and began firing mortars and launching drones, rockets, and ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Since Oct. 17, U.S. and coalition forces have been attacked at least 55 times in Iraq.
American officials have been reluctant to convene talks to discuss the future of the U.S.-led coalition while American troops are under fire from Iraqi militias. Many of the armed drones and rockets have been intercepted, but U.S. officials say Sudani’s government and military forces should do more to stop the attacks.
Sudani has been pressing to begin the talks, and raised the matter with national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a meeting at Davos on Monday, according to Iraqi officials.
Iraq’s relations with Iran have been strained in recent days after Tehran fired ballistic missiles Monday at what it said was an Israeli intelligence base in Northern Iraq, which Baghdad denied. Sullivan and Sudani talked about the Iranian attack and about “enhancing cooperation as part of a long-term, sustainable defense partnership,” the White House said in a statement.
“We agree on halting all attacks, and this is our objective,” Sudani said of the militias. “Also, we call for stopping the coalition’s drone flights across Iraq.”
U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein, and their presence in Iraq has been a politically challenging issue ever since.
In 2011, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then-President Barack Obama failed to negotiate an agreement providing for the continued deployment of U.S. forces, which led to the withdrawal of all American troops and an end to their training mission that year. That was followed by the emergence of Islamic State and its capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2014.
Thousands of American advisers returned later that year to help the Iraqis fight Islamic State, which had taken over large parts of northern and western Iraq. Faced with a common enemy, the U.S. military and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq initially stayed out of each other’s way.
But as Islamic State faced defeat, Iranian-backed militias began to attack U.S. troops in 2019. As the two sides traded blows and tensions escalated, then-President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike in January 2020 that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian paramilitary leader, as he was leaving the Baghdad airport.
The strike prompted the Iraqi parliament to pass a resolution demanding that foreign troops leave. To mollify Iraqi opinion, the U.S. declared an end to its combat mission in 2021 and made clear its role was limited to supporting Iraq’s forces.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com and Elena Cherney at Elena.Cherney@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 18, 2024, print edition as 'Iraq Seeks Exit of U.S.-Led Coalition'.