On Thursday, an Atlantic Council panel discussed how the U.S. military’s scheduled departure on September 30 could affect counterterrorism operations against ISIS, U.S. security cooperation with Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the broader U.S.-Iraq relationship.

At the panel, Mohammed A. Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, underlined that the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has been a significant front in the Iran war. He said more than 1,000 drone and missile attacks carried out by Iran and Iran-backed Shi’a armed factions in Iraq have been directed at the Kurdistan Region.

“The immediate question for many people there is whether the troop withdrawal could also mean an end to U.S. air defense protection for Kurdistan, which has been very helpful, at least in terms of protecting Erbil,” he said.

“We have heard reports of U.S. Patriot missile systems being transferred to Jordan. That means that, in the event of direct Iranian ballistic missile attacks, or other ballistic missile attacks by Shi’a armed factions, the Kurdistan Region could be very much exposed and vulnerable to this kind of attack.”

Moreover, he pointed out that, when the United States pulled out of Iraq in 2011, it only took two to three years for ISIS to make a comeback and take one-third of Iraqi territory and a chunk of Syrian territory.

“That’s a question that is really on the minds of many people in terms of the threat posed by ISIS or other jihadi groups being able to reorganize, regroup, and potentially bounce back at some point.”

At the panel, retired U.S. Ambassador Alina Romanowski, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from March 2022 to December 2024, said that both the current administration and the new prime minister have some serious challenges. 

“ISIS is still around,” she noted. “Now it’s in the responsibility of the Iraqi security forces to take on that challenge. In the context of the Iran war, how is Iraq going to react to militias that are going to continue to presumably take direction from Tehran and attack its neighbors?”

Salih also added that another concern in Erbil is the sense that the current U.S administration’s approach to the region is much more state-centric. 

“It wants to deal with central governments in national capitals as a way of streamlining its diplomatic and political relations with governments across the region. That has definitely created a sense of anxiety that the administration in Washington might be more willing to bypass the Kurds and deal more directly with Baghdad,” Salih said.

However, he said that several figures in the KRG have underlined that the Coalition withdrawal is not an end to the Kurdish-American relationship. 

“That relationship has been strong for at least 30 to 35 years, in the case of Iraqi Kurds, and it has been a productive and mutually beneficial partnership on many levels. Certainly on the security level, it was important in the joint campaign against Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, as well as under Operation Inherent Resolve and the counter-ISIS campaign,” Salih said. 

“So, the withdrawal of U.S. troops should not necessarily be equated with an end to U.S. political or diplomatic engagement with Iraq. And in terms of U.S. commercial interests, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region in particular are very well positioned to continue collaborating with the United States on those fronts,” he concluded.