Biden’s Iraq withdrawal plan is a trap for the next president

But there’s a problem: Despite Biden’s desire to declare “mission accomplished,” it isn’t, and a follow-on plan is nowhere near complete. Despite good intentions, if Biden formally agrees to end the anti-Islamic State mission, he might be setting the stage for a worsening Middle East crisis that will be left at the feet of his successor.

For months, U.S. and Iraqi military officials have been public about the fact that they are negotiating an agreement. That agreement would formally end Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led international coalition created to defeat the Islamic State in 2014, and is also expected to call for the withdrawal of all related U.S. troops in Iraq within two years’ time, several officials told me.

But announcing the deal, originally planned for this month, is now delayed because of “recent developments,” Iraq’s foreign ministry said last week. Those developments include attacks by Iranian-sponsored militias on U.S. forces in Iraq, as well as rising tensions with Iran after the killing in Tehran last month of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops, even with a two-year timeline, would signal the United States’ abandonment of the region just as allies are looking to Washington to increase deterrence against Iran. Even worse, the agreement would weaken the ability of the 77 nations involved in the coalition to coordinate against the Islamic State just as it mounts a comeback.

U.S. forces are scrambling to contain the terrorist group’s resurgence. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria this year alone, the Wall Street Journal reported. Internationally, Islamic State factions have claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks this year in Iran and Russia, and for a planned attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.

Kurdish-led forces fighting the Islamic State in northeastern Syria depend on U.S. air support and Special Operations forces. U.S. forces in Syria depend on U.S. forces in Iraq for intelligence and supplies. The departure of those troops would create a vacuum the Islamic State and Iranian proxies would fill.

Containing Iran is not technically part of the Inherent Resolve mission, but U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria are crucial to that goal. Though Iraqi leadership, headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, is publicly calling for U.S. troops to withdraw, many Iraqi officials privately fear the move would cede Iraq to Iranian control.

The two-year timeline between announcing the end of the anti-Islamic State mission and bringing the troops home is meant to give both sides enough wiggle room to adjust the plan if the threat balloons or if Iraqi security forces aren’t able to take over the counterterrorism responsibilities in time. But that intentional ambiguity has led to broad confusion.

For example, a State Department spokesman said last week the United States was not negotiating the “withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq, but rather a “transition” to a bilateral security arrangement. Officials told me that a subsequent U.S.-Iraq bilateral security agreement could result in most U.S. troops ultimately staying there to continue the fight against the Islamic State. That could, in theory, mitigate the risk of dissolving the anti-Islamic State coalition.

But that follow-on agreement would have to be negotiated by the next U.S. president. And if those negotiations fail, U.S. troops would have to withdraw completely. This is what happened in 2008 after George W. Bush signed an agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, and then Barack Obama tried but failed to negotiate a follow-on agreement to keep some of them there. Three years later, Obama ended up sending thousands of U.S. troops back to Iraq when the Islamic State took over a swath of territory the size of Virginia.

In 2021, Biden himself was left to implement the Afghanistan withdrawal agreement signed by his predecessor, Donald Trump. When the withdrawal went bad, Biden found it was useless to point out the plan hadn’t been his idea. Now, he is setting up his successor for a similar dilemma: either reverse Biden’s withdrawal plan and suffer politically, or follow through and risk a security disaster.

“Biden looks at this as part of his legacy. He’ll be able to say, I’m the one who ended these endless wars. And [Kamala] Harris may think this will allow her to blame Joe Biden later on,” said Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Politically, this all makes sense to all of them. But in reality, this is probably going to look worse than any of them realizes.”

No one wants to see U.S. troops stay in Iraq and Syria forever. But declaring that the mission is over doesn’t make it so. Ending “forever wars” is easier said than done. If the United States abandons its commitment to the security of the Middle East now, it might have to learn that lesson the hard way yet again.