A decade after U.S. troops returned to Iraq to fight the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate, Washington, D.C., and Baghdad are nearing the end of monthslong negotiations on a U.S. military withdrawal. According to a Sept. 6 Reuters report, U.S. and Iraqi defense officials have come to a preliminary arrangement in which U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq will withdraw by the end of 2026, with the first few hundred troops to make their way out by September 2025. 

The news comes days after U.S. special operations forces teamed up with Iraqi army commandos to flush out ISIS militants in the mountainous far-Western Iraq, where a senior ISIS figure was the primary target. Seven Americans were wounded in the operation, one of 250 joint missions Washington and Baghdad have executed together since October.