On September 30, 2026, the last US and coalition personnel departed Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq. Operation Inherent Resolve -the 12-year mission launched to defeat ISIS- was formally over. The next day, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi stood before the nation and declared October 1 “Sovereignty Day,” announcing that Iraq had entered “a new era in which Iraq transitions from an arena of conflict into a nation fully in command of its own decisions, safeguarding its land and sovereignty”.
It was a powerful moment. After more than two decades of foreign military presence -beginning with the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein- Iraq was, on paper at least, fully sovereign. The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, framed the withdrawal as the completion of a successful campaign. “This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region,” he said, adding that the transition marked a shift “from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship”.
But the story of what comes next is far more complicated than the ceremonies in Baghdad suggest. The American departure does not resolve Iraq’s deepest security dilemmas. It merely changes who has to confront them. To understand what this moment actually means, we need to look beyond the symbolism and examine four interconnected realities that will shape Iraq’s future.
The first reality is that the United States has not truly left Iraq, it has simply changed the terms of its presence. Parnell made it clear that the Department of War will continue to provide targeted training and intelligence support to Iraqi partners. CENTCOM described the move as part of a “planned transition to a USIraq bilateral defense relationship”. This is not a minor footnote. It means that American influence in Iraq will persist through a different channel – less visible, more conventional, but still significant. The coalition framework is gone, but the strategic partnership remains.
The analytical implication is clear: sovereignty, in practice, is not a binary condition. Iraq can expel foreign troops and still depend on foreign intelligence, training, and defense cooperation. The question is how much this new arrangement gives Baghdad genuine autonomy? Especially that Iran will use the situation -no doubt- to enhance its already-existed influence in Iraq, and maybe beyond.
The second reality is the most immediate threat to the sovereignty, which is the persistence of powerful armed groups that operate outside state control. The Prime Minister himself acknowledged this in his Sovereignty Day address, calling on factions to come “under a single national doctrine, a single banner, and a unified military and security decision.” “Be at the heart of the state, not outside it,” he urged.
Those words were directed at the Iran-aligned militias that form part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Some of these groups have operated with significant autonomy in Iraq, and around the region even, and they have made clear they do not intend to disarm. The “Islamic Resistance” in Iraq declared on the same day that it is “not bound by any timeline or agreement mentioned” and that “its weapons will remain a sacred trust in the hands of their fighters”. This is the core contradiction of Iraq’s new era. The state claims a monopoly on legitimate force, but powerful armed actors reject that claim. The original plan had linked the withdrawal of foreign troops to the disarmament of these factions. That linkage has broken down.
The third reality is regional. Iran has spent two decades building political and military influence inside Iraq, and it is not going to disappear because American troops have left. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wasted no time in framing the withdrawal as a historic victory. The Iranian organization confirmed that the expulsion of the United States from Iraq marks “the beginning of their withdrawal from all West Asia”, describing the departure as the result of the efforts of “resistance movements, popular support, and effective measures taken by the Iraqi government”.
But here, too, the reality is more nuanced than the rhetoric suggests. Iran’s influence in Iraq is real, but it is not absolute. Iraqi politics is fragmented among competing parties, armed groups, and state institutions. The withdrawal does not hand Iraq to Tehran. The risk is not that Iraq will suddenly once again be handed over to Iranian interests by the US, that is “too simplistic for a country where power is so widely dispersed. The real question is whether Baghdad can truly strengthen the state enough to prevent other centers of power from competing and interfering to fill the major space left by the departing Americans, whether it is the Turkish center, the Saudi Center, or other centers.
Some Iran-aligned groups have already argued that bringing the Peshmerga -Kurdish Paramilitary Forces- under federal military command should be part of the same process of disarmament that is being applied to other armed factions. That is a constitutionally complicated and politically explosive demand, that could seriously strain the relationship between Erbil and Baghdad at precisely the moment when unity is most needed in the country.
In other words, Iraq does not only face the problem of “vacuum” after the Americans, but also the internal and external completion for control, and also the sectarian division of its people, between Shia, Sunni, and Kurds. The next 2-3 years are not going to be an easy ones of Iraq, especially that Turkey could also push for a scenarios similar to the one that took place in Northeast Syria.
In fact, yes, Iraq now has the form of almost a full sovereignty. Whether it can develop the substance will depend on whether Baghdad can bring armed groups under united control, manage its relationships with each of Washington, Ankara, Riyadh and Tehran, and at the same time, hold the country all together. The Americans have left Iraq, however the hardest period has just begun, and the next two years are pretty critical for Iraq’s future, unity and stability.
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