US ENDS COMBAT IN IRAQ

Troops to stay in new role

President Biden on Monday hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House to announce a planned end to the US military’s combat mission in Iraq.

The largely symbolic announcement means US troops will transfer most combat duties to Iraq’s military this year. But unlike in Afghanistan, Biden will keep a large US military footprint in Iraq.

Biden stressed that US troops aren’t leaving Iraq entirely — as happened in 2011, setting the stage for the Islamic State group to seize a third of the country, resulting in a US return in 2014.

“Our shared fight against ISIS is critical for the stability of the region and our counterterrorism cooperation will continue even as we shift to this new phase,” Biden said in the Oval Office alongside Kadhimi.

Biden added: “I think things are going well. Our role in Iraq will be . . . to be available to continue to train, to assist, to help and to deal with ISIS as it arrives. But we’re not going to be by the end of the year in a combat mission.”

President Donald Trump reduced the number of US troops in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 in January before leaving office. And on Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed there remain 2,500 US troops there.

Psaki said the change isn’t about troop levels, but instead is about what they are tasked with doing.

“The real announcement today, or real news today, I should say, is about a change of mission,” she said. “And the numbers will be driven by what is needed for the mission over time. So it is more about moving to a more advising and training capacity from what we have had over the last several years.”

A Biden administration official who briefed reporters said that Iraqi forces are “battle tested” and “capable” of protecting their country — unlike in 2014 when they fled from ISIS, allowing the jihadist group to capture Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The mission change in Iraq comes amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which will be complete by Aug. 31.

Biden announced the US pullout from Afghanistan in April, offering US troops an additional four months from Trump’s preliminary plan to withdraw troops by May 1.

Biden and Kadhimi also were expected to discuss Iran during closed-door talks. Since re-entering Iraq in 2014, the US and Iran have vied for influence.

Trump ordered last year’s assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani— with an airstrike on his convoy near Baghdad’s airport — for supporting Shiite militias that attacked US troops.

Biden ordered airstrikes against Iran-allied militants in Syria and Iraq in February and June.

Last month, Iran’s President-elect Ebrahim Raisi said he would not meet with Biden and called Iran’s ballistic missile program “non-negotiable” as diplomats in Vienna discuss a new multilateral nuclear deal.

Raisi, a protege of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also demanded the US “lift all oppressive sanctions against Iran.”

The Obama administration’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium.

The Trump administration reimposed sanctions after withdrawing from the pact, which was signed with other world powers, in 2018, and Iran began breaching the deal shortly thereafter.

Some Democrats are calling on Biden to rejoin the original nuclear deal and Biden has called that framework “a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country would fully implement the agreement if Biden lifted sanctions, arguing it could be done with “three executive orders.”