Pentagon Declares End of 12-Year Anti-ISIS Mission in Iraq as Last U.S.-Led Coalition Forces Leave Erbil Air Base

An Air Base Goes Quiet in Erbil

For 12 years, coalition troops worked out of Iraqi bases as part of a mission built to destroy ISIS. On September 30, 2026, the last of them left. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the final coalition forces and equipment had departed Erbil Air Base in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, and that Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq was "formally concluded"^[1]. He tied the date to a September 2024 agreement between Washington and Baghdad that had set the whole withdrawal in motion^[1][6].

Erbil wasn't just any base. By this final stretch, it was hosting most of the roughly 1,500 American and coalition troops still in Iraq, making it the mission's last real hub^[2]. Patriot missile batteries and C-RAM systems, the short-range defenses that shoot down incoming rockets and drones, were reportedly pulled out along with the troops^[7]. Iraq's Cabinet marked the moment with a four-day public holiday, September 30 through October 3, calling it "Sovereignty Days," with October 1 set aside as National Sovereignty Day^[4][5].

That leaves a genuinely strange split screen. A war the U.S. is fighting against Iran is still going on elsewhere in the region, even as U.S. forces are packing up and driving out of Iraq^[7]. Both things are happening at once, and each side reads that timing differently.

Two Facts That Don't Sit Comfortably Together

Here's the tension at the center of this story: the U.S. is withdrawing from Iraq specifically because it's at war with Iran, and Iran-aligned militias in Iraq are treating that withdrawal as their own victory^[7][15]. Pulling troops out of range was meant to protect them. Instead, the exit is being celebrated by the very groups the U.S. worries will fill the space it leaves behind.

A Kataib Hezbollah security official named Abu Mujahid al-Assaf called it "the expulsion of the occupation forces, defeated," and "the beginning of full sovereignty"^[15][9]. The Pentagon, meanwhile, describes the same event as the successful ending of a job that was already done, not a retreat under pressure^[1]. Nobody disputes what physically happened. What it means is contested by everyone watching it.

Some of the underlying facts are settled and not in dispute anywhere. U.S. forces finished leaving Ain al-Asad Airbase in Anbar province back in January 2026, well before this week, with the Iraqi army taking full control there^[3]. Iraq had also promised to disarm Iran-backed militias by September 2026. That deadline has already slipped, now pushed to June 2027^[7]. So the coalition mission is over, but the militia weapons the mission was partly meant to counterbalance are still in place.

Why Nobody Wants to Repeat 2011

To understand why this withdrawal makes both sides nervous, it helps to remember what happened the last time U.S. troops left Iraq. American forces pulled out in 2011. Within a few years, ISIS had seized roughly a third of the country, and the U.S. came back in 2014 to fight it under the name Operation Inherent Resolve^[1]. That history is the shadow hanging over this exit, and both supporters and critics of the withdrawal are arguing with it in mind.

The Pentagon's case is that the job that brought troops to Iraq in 2014 is finished. It says the 12-year campaign "defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region," and that keeping a wartime coalition in place after the war is won would be the real mistake^[1]. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had already committed to the September 30 deadline back in July, in a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi^[1]. CENTCOM added that Kurdish Peshmerga forces now have "the capacity, leadership, and operational independence" to handle security in the region without outside help^[2].

There's also a more immediate, wartime logic behind the timing. U.S. troops sitting on fixed bases in Iraq are within easy reach of Iran-aligned militias, and with the U.S. now at war with Iran, those bases had become live targets^[7]. That risk wasn't hypothetical. Fox News reported that Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, was killed at Erbil Air Base in July 2026 during the disposal of a downed Iranian attack drone, one concrete data point critics point to when they argue the danger never went away^[10]. Pulling out cuts that exposure immediately, even if it also means giving something up.

What Baghdad Gains by Calling It Sovereignty

Iraq's government has its own reasons for wanting this day, and they aren't just about security. A four-day national holiday isn't the kind of thing a government declares reluctantly. Iraqi lawmaker Nasser Turki said the exit marks "the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq" and argued it would help attract foreign investment by ending the country's image as occupied ground^[4].

There's a real strategic bet buried in that celebration, and it's about the militias, not just the Americans. As long as foreign troops stayed in Iraq, armed groups like Kataib Hezbollah could point to that presence to justify keeping their own weapons. Take the foreign troops away, and that public rationale disappears, even if it takes time for the argument to translate into actual disarmament^[7][4].

That bet comes with real exposure, though. Iraqi forces said a suspected ISIS cell was preparing suicide attacks timed to the pullout, meaning Baghdad now owns the fight against ISIS remnants without American forces on the ground to help^[7]. The U.S. isn't gone completely — some Marines will stay to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil, and contractors will remain to maintain Iraq's American-made F-16 jets and tanks^[7][8]. The Pentagon also says it will keep offering "targeted training and intelligence" support from outside the country^[1]. But the day-to-day security burden now sits with Iraq alone.

The Same Story, Told Three Different Ways

How this got covered says almost as much as what happened. CBS News and the Associated Press stuck close to the Pentagon's own language, attributing the "end of the mission" framing to the military rather than stating it as settled fact^[1][15]. The Washington Post took a different approach, headlining its story "U.S. withdraws forces in Iraq as balance of power shifts to Iran," stating that judgment in its own voice rather than as someone's assessment^[9].

Fox News led with a hedge, "threat remains," even while folding the 2003 invasion and the 2014 anti-ISIS mission into a single "20 years" narrative and being the only outlet to name a U.S. service member killed in the mission's final months^[10]. Non-Western coverage tilted toward Baghdad's framing. Al Jazeera centered Iraq's "security balancing act," though it filed the story under a section tagged to the broader U.S.-Israel-Iran war^[11]. The South China Morning Post led with Baghdad's "Sovereignty Day" language directly in its headline^[12]. Kurdistan24 emphasized CENTCOM's praise for the Peshmerga, a framing that flatters the Kurdish region hosting the story's last base^[2].

What's Left Unsettled

The mission that started in 2014 is now formally over, and no coalition base remains anywhere in Iraq, federal territory or Kurdistan^[1][2][3]. What's left behind is a Marine guard at two diplomatic posts, contractors keeping American hardware running, and a promise of training and intelligence help from a distance^[1][8]. Iran-aligned militias still hold their weapons, with the disarmament deadline now more than eight months past the original target^[7].

Whether this ends up looking like a mission accomplished or a rerun of 2011 depends on things nobody can verify yet. Will the suspected ISIS cell that Iraqi forces flagged actually carry out an attack? Will the militias disarm by June 2027, or will that deadline slip again? For now, the base is empty, the holiday is underway, and both the Pentagon's victory lap and the warnings about Iran's gain are still just forecasts about a country nobody has to occupy anymore to worry about.