Middle East flare-ups test US relations with Iraq 

Clashes with Iranian-backed militia groups in the Middle East are testing the Biden administration’s relationship with the Iraqi government, with Baghdad reviving calls for American troops to leave the country as the ongoing fighting turns Iraq back into a warzone. 

Iran carried out a strike this week in Iraq that it claimed hit an Israeli spy base, further threatening to escalate tensions as Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani pushes for the removal of the roughly 2,500 American soldiers in his country. 

Washington says it has no plans to leave Iraq, but if al-Sudani follows through on his commitment, the U.S. will have no choice but to leave — which analysts say would leave about 900 American troops in Syria on an island and possibly force them to also withdraw. 

“That would be a massive victory for the Iranians,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is all part of a grand strategy to weaken the U.S. in the region.” 

While a decision is far from certain, public pressure is growing on Iraq’s leaders to remove the American military presence after a deadly U.S. strike in Baghdad earlier this month killed an Iranian-backed militia leader. 

Al-Sudani announced after the U.S. strike that he would convene a bilateral meeting to discuss the removal of American troops. 

“Let’s agree on a time frame that is, honestly, quick, so that they don’t remain long and the attacks keep happening,” al-Sudani told Reuters this month. “Ending its presence will prevent more tensions and the entanglement of internal and regional security issues.” 

The Iraqi parliament speaker also renewed calls for the U.S. to leave this week, according to Iraqi news outlets, and the government reportedly is polling citizens on whether or not they want the removal of American troops.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said last week the U.S. is in regular contact with the Iraqi government and has no plans to leave. 

“We view Iraq as a valued and important partner and we’re going to continue to communicate with them closely on a variety of topics to include the presence, safety and security of our forces,” Ryder told reporters. 

The Iranian strike this week, which hit the northwestern Iraqi city of Erbil and killed at least four people, was also condemned by al-Sudani, who announced a committee would investigate the attack and recalled an Iraqi ambassador from Tehran. Iran said it struck an anti-Iranian spy base in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, where Tehran has claimed Israel maintains an espionage operation.

The repeated strikes are pulling Iraq into a dangerous battle between Iran and its proxies against the U.S. — just as it emerges from a decade of war against the U.S. and then years more fighting terrorist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS). 

Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Rashid hailed a new era of peace in early 2023. 

“Peace and security is all over the country, and I would be very glad if you will report that and emphasize on that, instead of giving a picture of Iraq … still (as) a war zone, which a lot of media still do,” Rashid told the Associated Press.

Al-Sudani has painted U.S. soldiers as aggressors in the fighting with Iranian-backed militia groups. Like other Arab nations, Iraqis are largely sympathetic to the Palestinians as they struggle against an Israeli onslaught in Gaza.

Gregory Gause, a Middle East researcher and professor at Texas A&M University, said more Iraqis have a negative view of the U.S. than they do of Iran, explaining the war in Gaza is widening that divide.  

But he said al-Sudani, the Iraqi prime minister, likely does not want to remove the U.S. for fear of allowing Iranian influence to grow unchecked. A Politico report also suggested Iraqi officials are privately seeking to keep the U.S. in the country. 

“It does give him a little bit of leverage vis-a-vis Iran,” Gause said of the U.S. presence. “It’s interesting that it’s the Iranians that have initiated these attacks on American forces and the United States is responding. It’s not the other way around [and that] gives us a sense that the Iranians see this as a time to push to get the Americans out of Iraq, which has been one of their goals since 2003.” 

But Gause sees pressure growing if Israel’s war in Gaza carries on, and said al-Sudani’s calculations could change. 

“The longer the Gaza war goes on, the more likely it becomes that the political pressures in Iraq will lead to the prime minister actually moving to get rid of the Americans,” Gause said. “I don’t think he really wants to do that. But he might feel that he has to.” 

It’s not clear what the impact of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be on the counter-terrorism war. 

ISIS remains a threat in the Middle East, but the group is largely subdued since its rise to power in 2014. Iraq invited the U.S. to its country after the rise of ISIS and the troops remain there to fight off insurgent cells and train Iraqi militias. 

But al-Sudani told Reuters that Iraq is now strong enough to defeat a weakened ISIS without American troops on the ground. 

Even so, a U.S. exit creates a power vacuum in the region likely to be seized on by Iran, Russia and other adversaries.  

Al-Sudani, who works closely with Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, became prime minister in October 2022 and moved Baghdad closer to Tehran’s orbit.  

The Iraqi prime minister is aligned with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of some 60 Iranian-backed militia groups that acts as a formal security force in Iraq. 

Patricia Karam, a non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., said the PMF has grown into a “powerful force that can be used against Sudani’s opponents, with combat experience, geographic reach, and unprecedented access to resources, plus Iranian patronage.” 

“The organization has managed to ensconce itself even further in state and economic affairs and has become stronger than ever” since Sudani’s administration, Karam wrote in a July analysis. 

The U.S. strike in Baghdad earlier this month killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, the leader of an Iranian-backed militia group Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which is part of the PMF. 

The Iraqi government immediately condemned the strike as a hostile action that violated its sovereignty. 

The U.S. has not ruled out more strikes on Iranian-backed groups, with the Pentagon saying it will continue to take action to defend its troops if needed. 

Iraq has voted to remove the U.S. from its soil before. In 2020, after the U.S. killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimaniin Baghdad, the Iraqi parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling for American troops to leave.

This time, however, Iraq could be more serious, considering al-Sudani himself is pushing for the removal of U.S. soldiers, according to analysts. 

“The militias have grown in power, Iranian influence has grown,” said Roggio, from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

“The Iraqi government might be serious at this point in time. It’s difficult for [Iraq] to balance the pressure from the militias in Iran and the U.S., which is launching strikes on its territory without the approval of the Iraqi government.” 

Iraq has complete power to expel the U.S. from the country. American troops are serving at the invitation of the Iraqi government and are not operating under any treaty or formal agreement. 

Ruba Ali Al-Hassani, an Iraqi researcher at Lancaster University, said Iraq is less concerned about a U.S. and Iran proxy war than ensuring peace within its borders.

She said al-Sudani is “taking a diplomatic path to de-escalate and is considering the option of pushing the U.S. out if necessary. “ 

“Whether that will indeed happen is another matter,” Al-Hassani said in an email. “Either way, this is a matter of Iraqi sovereignty and is not about a US-Iran proxy war on Iraqi soil which Iraqis explicitly resent. “