SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
U.S. military forces formally left Iraq today. That marks a new era in that Middle East nation that has suffered so much bloodshed for decades. What began with President Bush's shock and awe invasion more than 23 years ago ended today with a very low-key ceremony. We're joined by two NPR correspondents who have covered this closely, Greg Myre in Washington, here in the studio, and Jane Arraf in Baghdad. Welcome to both of you.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Sacha.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Thank you.
PFEIFFER: Jane, since you are in Baghdad, would you describe the scene there today and how Iraq is framing this event?
ARRAF: Sure. I mean, first we have to remember this was the second withdrawal since 2003. In 2011, I and other journalists who had been embedded with U.S. forces on the front lines attended a ceremony. There was a flag lowering, commanders boarding military planes. There was a recognition of lives lost, of the gains made and all that had happened.
Now, fast-forward three years later, and Iraq - American forces were back to help Iraq fight ISIS. And they've stayed since then. So today was different. This ceremony took place behind closed doors. There was no media allowed. The last of what had been about 1,500 U.S. troops based in Iraq's Kurdistan region, in fact, had already left before the deadline today. But, you know, after two decades that included an eight-year occupation, at least 200,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and more than 4,400 U.S. personnel dead, it was extremely understated for such a momentous event.
PFEIFFER: Greg, the U.S. and Iraq fought their first war in 1991. You covered that war. Give us your sense of the U.S. military legacy in Iraq after all these years.
MYRE: Yeah, extremely mixed. I mean, it was often troubled, many painful setbacks and really just fell far short of expectations. That first war in 1991 was very brief. It lasted just six weeks and it went very well for the U.S. The U.S. drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. I think it created this notion that the U.S. could operate very effectively in the Middle East. The U.S. stayed a couple of months and then left. And that was really the first U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
And it's been much more fraught and complicated since then. Successive presidents have wanted to leave Iraq. And this deal today was negotiated by President Biden two years ago. President Trump went ahead with the deal, and he said on Truth Social today this was a great day for America. And he added, quote, "it's been a long time with very bad decision-making that got us involved in this quagmire in the first place." And Trump, of course, long a critic of U.S. wars in the Middle East. But he's launched a war in Iran that's still unresolved.
PFEIFFER: Jane, the Iraqi government declared this day Sovereignty Day. The prime minister says it is a new phase of Iraq taking full responsibility for its security. How much is this actually a turning point?
ARRAF: Well, we spoke today with the Iraqi former Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who negotiated the pullout of U.S. forces in 2011. And he told us it's an important development but maybe not a pivotal one.
HOSHYAR ZEBARI: The departure or the withdrawal of the coalition forces or the American forces doesn't mean that American influence has decreased. American political, financial, diplomatic influence will remain, maybe stronger.
ARRAF: And one of those important levers is U.S. control over Iraq's currency. Oil revenue since 2003 has gone through the U.S. Federal Reserve bank.
PFEIFFER: Greg, compared to when the war started, what would you say are the U.S. interests in Iraq today?
MYRE: Yeah. Those earlier wars, the U.S. was acting very much against Saddam Hussein. They saw him as the main destabilizing force in the region. And Saddam was ousted. But all these years of American military action have clearly not achieved the goal of stabilizing the Middle East.
Today, the U.S. really wants a more normal political and economic relationship with Iraq. You know, Iraq was the world's fifth leading oil producer, though that's been disrupted by the Iran war. The U.S. wants Iraq to be a stabilizing political force in the Middle East, wants Iraq to limit Iran's influence in the region. So we'll be watching this pullout closely to see what happens in Iraq without the U.S. military presence.
PFEIFFER: Jane, Greg mentioned the unresolved Iran war. And it's hard to talk about Iraq without talking about Iran. How does Iran see the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq?
ARRAF: Well, definitely as a victory. The U.S. toppling of Saddam in 2003 opened the door for Iranian influence and it's been growing militarily, economically, politically. We attended a rally today of Iran-backed militias who were celebrating the pullout.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in non-English language).
ARRAF: These are young men, some of them holding flags of some of the hardest-line militias. And they're chanting, my weapons drove out the occupiers. We asked the spokesman for one of the groups, the Nujaba Movement, whether they would give up their weapons now that U.S. forces had left. And he said, no, because they don't trust the U.S.
PFEIFFER: Greg, does the U.S. pullout in Iraq say anything larger about the future role of the U.S. military in the Middle East?
MYRE: Yeah, Sacha, today is a perfect example of these crosscurrents we're seeing. U.S. troops are leaving Iraq, yet there's this ongoing war with Iran that shows that the U.S. can't seem to stay out of the Middle East. So the U.S. has dramatically expanded its Middle East military presence during these earlier Iraq wars. Now the debate is focused on whether the U.S. should maintain or scale back this presence.
PFEIFFER: That is NPR's Greg Myre and Jane Arraf. Thank you to both of you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Sacha.
ARRAF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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