The Mission Moved to Jordan

The last American troops in Iraq left Erbil Air Base on Wednesday. U.S. Central Command said the coalition’s joint task force had moved to Jordan, and that operations against the Islamic State in Syria would continue. The Pentagon’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, called it an “orderly departure” and said that responsibility for Iraq’s remaining security problems, including “Iran-aligned militias that undermine Iraqi sovereignty,” now rests with the Government of Iraq. President Trump called the day “a decisive victory over ISIS.” Baghdad declared a holiday.

Almost every account says the troops left on schedule, under an agreement reached two years ago. That is correct. It is worth reading what the schedule was for.

Two dates, two missions

The document is a joint statement released by the governments of the United States and Iraq on 27 September 2024, after nine months of talks in the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission. It has three numbered paragraphs. The first concludes “the Coalition’s military mission in Iraq” within twelve months, “no later than the end of September 2025,” with a transition “to bilateral security partnerships.”

The second paragraph is the one that ran out this week. It provides that “the military mission of the Coalition operating in Syria from a platform determined in the HMC will continue until September 2026,” and makes even that “subject to conditions on the ground.”

Read together, the two dates describe something narrower than the end of a war. On paper, the coalition’s mission in Iraq ended a year ago. What the second date governed was Iraq’s use as a base for operations next door, and Erbil was that base. The mission it served has not ended. Central Command says it has relocated. The BBC, citing United Nations estimates, puts the Islamic State’s remaining strength in Syria at up to 3,000 fighters, and American forces remain there.

What replaces the coalition

The statement’s answer to what comes next is a reference to older paper. Future cooperation is to be “consistent with the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement and the Iraqi Constitution.” The framework agreement was signed in 2008 alongside a separate status of forces agreement. The status of forces agreement, which governed American troops in the country, ran out with the withdrawal of 2011. The framework agreement outlived it, as a general commitment to cooperate on security, diplomacy and trade. Neither went to the Senate as a treaty.

That is the structure Parnell meant when he spoke of “a more normal bilateral security relationship.” Its contents have not been written. The Pentagon says it will provide “targeted training and intelligence support.” Sabah al-Numan, a spokesman for the chief of the Iraqi armed forces, told NPR that the two governments would be discussing bilateral agreements, and that Iraq was looking at air defence systems from South Korea, Turkey and the United States. For now there is no new instrument: only the 2008 framework, and a commission that meets.

The authority at home had already gone

The American legal footing changed earlier, and with less ceremony. The defence authorization act that President Trump signed on 18 December 2025, Public Law 119-60, repealed both the 1991 authorization for the Gulf War and the 2002 authorization for the Iraq war. It was the first repeal of a war authorization since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1971. Senator Todd Young, who sponsored the repeal with Senator Tim Kaine, called it “legislative hygiene.”

Neither of those laws was the main domestic authority for the campaign against the Islamic State. Successive administrations have rested it chiefly on the 2001 authorization against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, which remains in force, and which Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Thomas Massie have proposed to repeal. Wednesday’s departure changes nothing about what the President may lawfully do against the group in Syria.

What it changes is the basis on which American troops would be in Iraq at all. Since 2014 that basis has been an invitation from Baghdad. The 2024 statement ends with Iraq reaffirming its commitment to protect “international advisors present in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government.” By agreement of both governments, the advisers are gone, and so is the invitation’s practical content.

The other deadline that moved

One date in this story did not hold. According to NPR, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi agreed at the White House in July to disarm the Iran-backed militias by 30 September, the same day the troops left, and has since asked to move that deadline to next June. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the administration knows al-Zaidi is committed to the process, without saying it had accepted the extension. Three of the most powerful militias have said they will not give up their weapons while Iraq remains vulnerable.

The withdrawal kept to its date because it was the one commitment that either government could carry out by itself. Whatever follows it, the bilateral agreements, the air defences and the disarmament, depends on both.

Sources

The joint statement of 27 September 2024 is quoted from the text the State Department released as a media note, read in full from the GlobalSecurity.org archive copy because the State Department’s page now returns not found. The repeal and its date are from Senator Young’s office and Roll Call; the public law number is from the amendment notes to 10 U.S.C. 526. Parnell’s statement and Central Command’s account are as reported by Al Jazeera and the BBC; al-Numan’s remarks and the disarmament timetable are from NPR’s report from Baghdad. The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times refused automated requests, and nothing here relies on them.