Iraqi militias fighting US troops are not convinced Biden is ready to step down

An Iraqi militia that played a major role in attacks on U.S. troops aimed at driving them out of the country said Newsweek that the group was skeptical of recent reports suggesting that President Joe Biden’s administration had reached a deal with Baghdad to withdraw its forces.

Reuters reported the deal two weeks ago, citing unnamed sources as saying the withdrawal would involve the departure of hundreds of the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq by next September and the departure of the last forces by the end of 2026.

Although the deal still needs a final green light, similar reports have been published in The Washington Post and this was later openly mentioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Speaking to Bloomberg on Sunday, the Iraqi prime minister confirmed that a bilateral military committee formed by the two sides last year to discuss a U.S. withdrawal had “reached an agreement to organize this withdrawal,” and that a formal announcement would come at an upcoming international conference against the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group.

While Sudani asserted that “the justifications for the presence of the US-led coalition have ceased given the degradation of ISIS over the past decade, militias opposed to both ISIS and the US military presence continue to sow doubt that Washington was truly ready to leave.

“First, the Iraqi government, through all its political and military bodies related to the dialogues with the American side, has not given a clear and explicit position on the outcome of its agreements and dialogues with the American side,” said Nujaba movement spokesman Hussein al-Musawi. Newsweek“And everything was unclear about these bilateral meetings and their results are not known to the Iraqis, on the one hand.”

“On the other hand, regarding the movement’s position,” Musawi said, “we always say that we are not convinced by the American promises and that America will not keep its promises and will continue to evade in order to remain in the region as long as possible by sowing sedition and destabilizing political and economic stability in Iraq and the region in general.”

Newsweek contacted the Iraqi government and the U.S. State Department for comment.

The Nujaba movement, also known as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, emerged in 2013 from a mass mobilization of Shiite militias deployed with Iranian help to fight ISIS as it invaded Iraq and Syria. As the jihadists’ self-proclaimed caliphate fell to several local, regional and international powers, a number of Iraqi militias demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

These claims gained momentum after violence between US troops and Iraqi militias reached a fever pitch with the US assassination of the head of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in January 2020.

Today, the war in Gaza has become a new catalyst for unrest in Iraq. Since the conflict erupted last October, the Nujaba movement and other prominent Iraqi militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah, have carried out attacks against Israeli and American troops in Iraq and Syria under the collective banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The Iraqi militia campaign against U.S. forces has slowed considerably since the Biden administration ordered a major series of airstrikes in response to the killing of three U.S. soldiers on the Jordan-Syria border in January. But militia leaders have repeatedly warned that the offensive will resume in full force if ongoing U.S.-Iraq negotiations do not produce a timely agreement on the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

These warnings, including those from the Nujaba movement, intensified in July after the United States carried out a preemptive airstrike on Iraq’s Babil province, followed by a rocket attack that wounded seven American personnel at Ain al-Asad airbase in Anbar province.

Amid this instability, the Iraqi government is under considerable pressure to prevent a wider escalation, and Prime Minister Sudani has already expressed his desire for both sides to establish a timetable for a US withdrawal as soon as possible.

U.S. officials, however, have yet to confirm an update on the talks. Speaking to reporters Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller declined to provide further developments and referred to the fact that the Biden administration had “held a number of discussions with the government of Iraq this year about the future of our forces there.”

“We have made clear to them that we will review with the Iraqi government a number of factors to determine when and how the Global Coalition mission in Iraq will end and transition in an orderly manner into a permanent bilateral security partnership, consistent with the Iraqi constitution and the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework,” Miller said. “And those discussions are ongoing.”

The next day, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder also declined to discuss any deal at a news conference.

“As we have talked about in the past,” Ryder said, “the United States and Iraq, at the highest levels, from the prime minister to the president, have emphasized that we are in discussions to look at how to move from the global coalition to a sustainable bilateral security cooperation relationship between the United States and Iraq.”

Meanwhile, the security situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza. Iran continues to threaten Israel with retaliation following the unclaimed assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July, and tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have escalated amid intensified cross-border attacks and two deadly explosions that hit communications devices in Lebanon and Syria this week.

As part of the Iranian-allied Axis of Resistance, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has vowed to continue and expand its direct attacks on Israel. Iraqi militias recently claimed on Wednesday that they had launched a drone attack on the Israeli port city of Haifa “in continuation of our resistance to the occupation, in support of our people in Gaza and in response to the massacres committed by the usurping entity against Palestinian civilians, including children, women and the elderly.”

“The Islamic Resistance confirms the continuation of operations aimed at destroying the enemies’ strongholds at an increasing pace,” the coalition of militias said in a statement.

On the same day, the Israel Defense Forces announced “a hostile air infiltration” over the northwestern Sea of ​​Galilee and said that a drone “approaching Iraq was intercepted by IAF (Israeli Air Force) fighter jets.”