Reuters: US forces exit Iraq after two decades

US forces are set to pull out from their last bases in Iraq by Wednesday, a departure celebrated as a victory by Iran and its allies who now have deep influence in the country where 4,500 Americans died during more than two decades of war, Reuters reports.

Abu Mojtaba al-Yasiri, a commander in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, described the US withdrawal as "a historic victory for the Iraqi Islamic resistance groups and honorable Iraqis, and a crushing defeat for the American project".

"On September 30, we will celebrate the turning of a black page ⁠in Iraq’s history and the failure of the occupation to impose its will on our country," he told Reuters. "Iraq has proven that its sovereignty cannot be secured by foreign forces, but by the resistance and the will of its people."

American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein, and went on to occupy the country, install a Shi'ite-led government and fight a years-long counterinsurgency before withdrawing at the end of 2011.

In recent years, Iraq has been the only country to maintain close political and military alliances with both the United States and Iran, which sometimes used Iraqi territory as a proxy battlefield.

The United States killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, with a strike on Baghdad Airport ⁠in 2020.

In this year's war against Iran, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed were in Iraq, the last an army sergeant who died during the controlled detonation of a drone at a base near Erbil in July.

Iran, which says its ultimate aim is to force American forces to leave the entire Middle East, casts the US withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for its "axis of resistance" of allied armed groups across the region.

"Lasting security will prevail in Iraq" once the Americans leave the country and the region, the deputy chairman of the National Security Commission of Iran's Parliament, Amir Hayat Moqaddam, said on Monday.

Iran "welcomes the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and will undoubtedly support it," he ​told Iran's parliamentary news service. "Resistance groups are currently ⁠taking action, sometimes targeting and confronting American troops."

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