Erbil - As the United States and Iran continue to seek to win their conflict in Iraq, Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi agreed with US President Joe Biden during his visit to Washington to end the presence of US combat forces on Iraqi soil by the end of this year. 

Ending this presence is due to a strategic agreement between the two countries held in 2008 and implemented in 2011, before Baghdad demanded in 2014 the return of US forces after the Islamic State’s invasion of large areas of north and northwest Iraq, to ​​continue since then maneuvers between the armed factions backed by the Iran with US forces inside Iraqi territory.

We left Washington for our beloved Baghdad after a successful visit, economic, political and cultural understandings, and an agreement to transfer the security relationship to training and advice, and the absence of combat forces by the end of the year.


We look forward to strengthening social and political solidarity to serve our people, and we hope for continuous communication with @POTUS to devote the values ​​of cooperation and dialogue.

— Mustafa Al-Kadhimi Mustafa Al-Kadhimy (@MAKadhimi) July 29, 2021

Among the terms of the new agreement signed by Al-Kazemi and Biden is that the role of the US and coalition forces in Iraq will shift from fighting to training, advisory and support missions at various levels related to training Iraqi forces and combating terrorism.

Al-Azzawi: Foreign penetration needs a diplomatic rearrangement, using the pressure cards owned by Iraq (Al-Jazeera)

soft power

Away from the investigation and achievement, there are many questions and inquiries surrounding the withdrawal decision, most notably: Will his success be counted for what is known as the Iranian-backed resistance front through its continuous targeting of American interests inside Iraq, or to the Iraqi negotiating party and Iraqi diplomacy after it failed for several years in this?

What is the probability that this will be exploited and employed politically for the benefit of some parties in the parliamentary elections scheduled for next October?

Before talking about the outcomes of this dialogue, it is necessary to distinguish between two agreements, the first related to withdrawal, and the other to cooperation within the strategic framework in the security, political, cultural and economic frameworks between the Baghdad and Washington governments signed between them in 2008, and in general, the withdrawal means arranging the presence and attendance of American military sites in the world and their number is one thousand Base, says political analyst and professor of international relations, Dr. Raad Qassem Al-Azzawi.

The subject of the agreement to determine the withdrawal period is not, in essence, related to the strength of the Iraqi internal factor, and it is almost ineffective in relation to the so-called resistance factions or the Iraqi government, but rather it is related - according to Al-Azzawi - to those rapid changes that appeared on the international scene with China entering into its alliance with Iran Russia is part of the so-called soft power and the Silk Road.

Al-Azzawi told Al-Jazeera Net that Washington is seeking to raise the virtual combat power to Jordan and replace it with a high-tech space force so that one room of technical devices in western Iraq can manage a whole network of missile projectiles and smart bombs using the so-called weapons that do not sleep and an army without humans, pointing out To that America wants to use another way to manage power in Iraq to confront the Chinese penetration through the Silk Road.

The Arab Mashreq - and Iraq in particular - has an important position. If America and its allies were able to establish its presence in it, it would cut off the road from what is called the Chinese agreement on the Silk Road, and if the opposite happened and China and its allies succeeded in penetrating and achieving its strategy, it would thus take - as Al-Azzawi asserts - the lead in the global and economic international system. from America.

Al-Azzawi doubts the ability of what is known as the resistance factions loyal to Tehran to fight a war against all kinds of foreign penetration inside Iraq, and stresses that the issue needs a diplomatic rearrangement using only the pressure papers that Iraq possesses.


complementary role

In contrast to al-Azzawi, Iraqi political analyst Muhammad al-Basri believes that what he described as the will of the resistant people met in an integrative role with the will of the Iraqi negotiator and diplomacy, and this resulted in the outcomes of the strategic dialogue that included the expulsion of foreign forces from the country.

He believes that diplomacy had to move to block the justifications of what is known as the axis of the resistance factions to target American interests.

According to Al-Basri, this targeting forced Washington to sit at the dialogue table, ruling out that this step was just electoral propaganda for some political parties, because the bombing of American interests and targets escalated after the killing of Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Authority, and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani in An American raid near Baghdad International Airport early last year.

Al-Basri expects that Washington will exploit the nets of so-called advisers and training to return again from the door or stay, as happened in 2014, when it used the pretext of fighting ISIS and returned, describing the decision to withdraw from Iraq as a "big victory" for the will of the "resistance" and the people together.

Al-Baydar: The withdrawal of US combat forces may be part of an agreed maneuver between Washington and the Iraqi government (Al-Jazeera)

time tactic

For his part, political analyst Ali Al-Baydar has an opinion that seems exciting and completely different from what Al-Azzawi and Al-Basri came with, expecting that the decision to withdraw will be part of an agreed-upon maneuver between the United States and the Iraqi government to convince and absorb the pressure obtained by the factions and armed groups, and give them the illusion that there is a withdrawal until the elections are over. Parliamentary.

However, Al-Baydar does not deny that what was achieved is actually a victory for the Shiite armed groups and factions and the political currents that support them or that they supervise, and this is what prompts him to expect that he will be electorally exploited in the upcoming elections.

Through this maneuver, Washington and Baghdad are trying to invest the time factor to calm the current thorny situation until elections are held and a new government is formed that deals with a completely different vision that may strike everything that was announced or agreed upon by attacking those groups, based on this that the new government will be formed before the specified period. The withdrawal of US combat forces at the end of this year

Al-Baydar believes that the presence of American forces in Iraq is never dependent on the moods of armed groups and factions or political currents that reject them, nor on governmental desires or American wills, but rather contingent upon what necessitates the need for that presence at the current stage until the full readiness of the regular Iraqi forces.