U.S. troops are leaving Iraq. What does that mean for U.S. influence in the region?

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. An historic milestone in Iraq this week, U.S. forces are withdrawing after a two-decade-long military presence. My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. That was President George W. Bush announcing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Later that year, the U.S. toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, but the security situation worsened. Over the course of the war, there were thousands of U.S.

0:45troop casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. Now, the most recent phase of U.S. military engagement in Iraq, Operation Inherent Resolve, will end in low-key fashion with the departure of only a few hundred soldiers. It marks, though, the conclusion of a chapter that has shaped many Americans' view of the Middle East and that popularized the term forever war, the kind of conflict that President Trump has vowed to avoid. I know there's a bit of Iraq fatigue amongst the American public or policymakers in D.C., but that doesn't take away from the fact that the United States has spent a lot of years, a lot of money, and a lot of lives in Iraq.

1:31And so the success of Iraq is still important to many, and it ties the two countries together. Hamza Haddad is an Iraqi political analyst with the Center for a New American Security who used to be based in Baghdad. He says just because U.S. troops are leaving Iraq doesn't mean the U.S. is relinquishing military power in the region. The U.S. will maintain a large diplomatic presence, and it has military capacity in other parts of the Gulf and the Middle East. Yet Iraq is still central to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran and is caught in the crossfire. Iraq is the only country in the region in the last year that's been bombed by both the United States and Iran.

2:14It kind of gives you an idea that the proxy battleground that Iraq presents. Consider this. America's final troop withdrawal from Iraq ends more than 20 years of military engagement. Where does that leave U.S. influence in the region? And does it present opportunities for other nations to fill the vacuum? From NPR, I'm Debbie Elliott.

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3:57It's Consider This from NPR. Iraq is very different today than the country the U.S. invaded in 2003. And today's America is very different from that time, too. NPR's Jane Araf has reported from Iraq since the 1990s. She joined me from Amman, Jordan, to talk about the significance of the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. I began by asking her what exactly to expect this week. Well, by Wednesday, the U.S. will have pulled out all the forces that have been operating under the anti-ISIS coalition that it formed in 2014. That's when the militant group ISIS took over roughly a third of Iraqi territory.

4:42And it's also when Iraqi army divisions that were hollowed out by corruption and sectarianism just collapsed. So the U.S. had left in 2011. They thought they were done. They had a ceremony. They got on military planes. This time, as they're leaving, there will be no fanfare. Central Command says there's no ceremony that will be open to the press. It will be a quiet withdrawal. There are only a few hundred of the roughly 2 ,500 troops that have been here this year left anyway. And we have to compare that to the height of the war when there were something like 170 ,000. So this is a turning point for Iraq.

5:22It's under pressure from Iran-backed political parties and militias who have demanded that the U.S. military leave. And President Trump has pledged no more what he calls endless wars, including the one in Iraq. We know that Iraq relied a lot on the U.S. military, including air defenses that have intercepted what is believed to be hundreds of Iranian missiles since the start of the Iran war. Where does that leave Iraq? Well, in many ways, there's a much stronger Iraqi military than there had been before, and that's thanks to 23 years of training by the U.S. and other countries. But there are some capabilities it doesn't have, like intelligence and surveillance, air support.

6:08Those are the kind of capabilities that helped defeat ISIS territorially in Iraq in 2017. But we have to mention that the big worry here is from the Kurds. They are a main security partner of the U.S. And that region, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, is now a main target of Iran and Iran-backed militias. So Kurdish leaders say almost 1 ,000 drones and missiles have hit the region, and they say they have no air defenses. So they're left feeling very vulnerable. That's been one of the themes of the post-invasion. Iraq hasn't hit the increasing Iranian influence over the country, including the Iran-backed militias that have attacked the U.S.

6:52embassy and other targets. What is happening on that front? Well, September 30th was also to have been the deadline for Iraq's new prime minister to disarm those militias and bring all weapons under control of the state. So that's a really tall order. Other Iraqi leaders, far more experienced than he is, have tried before and failed. The prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, is a political newcomer, a former businessman. But Trump really likes him. So that's hugely important. He promised Trump in a visit to the White House in July that he'd have the militias disarmed by September 30th. He is now saying that he actually needs until mid-next year, but the U.S.

7:34seems to be going along with that. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week. I think he has the right intentions. I think he has the right motivations. He's very intelligent and a very willing partner in this regard. And we're going to do everything we can to help him achieve the results. and we know it will not be easy. We know it will be difficult. So that's expected to diffuse threats from the U.S. of economic measures if Iraq doesn't, in fact, disarm those militias. Jane, the U.S. has invested so much in Iraq, including the lives lost, more than 4 ,000 U.S. military personnel. Tell us more about why the military is withdrawing now.

8:16Well, that Iranian influence has grown since the U.S. opened that door by toppling an Iraqi dictator who was an enemy of Iran. So really, it became untenable for U.S. forces to stay. But also, President Trump made clear from beginning with his campaign pledges that he wanted to end these kinds of wars. Now, of course, there's the war he has started with Israel in Iran, but he denies that one will be an endless war. Iraq, by the way, is still part of that equation of the war in Iran. There have been recently attacks on Saudi oil facilities that Saudi says came from Iran-backed militias in Iraq, although Iraq denies that.

9:00But the U.S. says it's focusing now on economic ties, not so much military ones. So Iraq is a major oil producer and potentially a huge market. And so the U.S. is looking at what it can do for the United States with zero appetite for the kind of nation building that we saw after the invasion. So if they haven't yet, what are the prospects that those militias will actually hand over their weapons? Well, at least three of the hardest line factions say they won't. We sat down with a spokesman for one of them recently, a group called Khattab Sayyid Shahada. And he explained that while, yes, their demand had been that U.S.

9:39forces leave, he says, well, it's still an economic occupation. And by that, he means that U.S. controls Iraqi oil revenue because it goes through the Central Reserve Bank in New York. So that's a lot of leverage on Iraq. Still, this is considered a victory by Iraq and many Iraqis. The Iraqi government is calling it the Day of Sovereignty, and they've declared it a holiday. Jane, you've covered the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the many battles that followed, a lot of it embedded with U.S. forces. Can you talk to us a little bit about how Iraq has changed regarding the U.S. military presence over the years?

10:20It's changed so much. I really feel like there are several different Iraqs. The first was a country that was literally run by Americans who knew so little about it. And then the soldiers I first met were told it would take six weeks and they'd be home. and then there was a security vacuum, an insurgency, and it dragged on for years and led to a civil war in which a group called the Iraq Body Count says at least 200 ,000 civilians were killed. And some of those were killed, a lot of them were killed by American soldiers because they got too close to a convoy or they misunderstood hand signals. There were so many places in their own country Iraqis couldn't go.

11:05But, you know, it's a very young population, and now we've reached the point where a lot of young people, almost all young people, have never seen a U.S. soldier. So there are a lot of challenges ahead for sure, but Iraq does seem to have reached a point where it's largely in control of its own destiny. NPR's international correspondent, Jane Araf, thanks so much for your insight here. Thank you. This episode was produced by Daniel Offman, Lina Muhammad, and Jeff Pierre with audio engineering by Becky Brown. Our director is Vincent Acovino. It was edited by Sarah Robbins. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.

11:50It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Debbie Elliott. This November, there's a wave of Democrats running for office who are all members of the clergy. But can they convince the party's secular base? I don't think religion should play into government and politics at all. I thought the country was founded on that. On the Sunday story, how Democratic pastors are reframing the role of faith in American politics. Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app. On NPR's Wildcard Podcast, Willem Dafoe is an open book. I'm a terrible liar. Aren't actors supposed to be good at lying?

12:29Yeah, maybe I'm a bad actor. Definitely sometimes. Watch or listen to that Wildcard Conversation on the NPR app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.