Leaving in Wartime: Who Gains, Who Fears and What India Loses as US Forces Exit Iraq

WHY WASHINGTON IS LEAVING IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR

The obvious question about this withdrawal is why the US would leave Iraq while fighting Iran. The answer is that the war is the reason. What this is really about is exposure. In this year's conflict, 7 of the 18 US service members listed as killed died in Iraq.

Bases inside Iraq, surrounded by Iran-aligned militias, had become targets rather than assets. Completing a withdrawal already agreed in 2024 lets the Trump administration cut those losses and call it honouring a deal.

The interest map Each actor is acting rationally from where it sits.

• Washington wants to reduce the number of soldiers within reach of Iranian proxies and to keep an old promise to end "forever wars". It can still strike from outside Iraq. What it gives up is ground-level intelligence and influence in Baghdad.
• Tehran gets the outcome it has pushed for since 2003. It can present the exit as proof that resistance works, which matters at home and across the region.
• Iran-aligned militias gain the most immediately. Without US forces nearby, they face less pressure and gain room to turn a symbolic "victory" into greater influence over Iraq's security and politics.
• Baghdad gets full sovereignty on paper. It also loses the one outside force that helped it balance the militias and keep Iraq between two patrons rather than under one.
• Sunni tribes and Kurds fear a vacuum. For them, the Americans were insurance against both militia dominance and a return of the Islamic State.
• The Islamic State gains quietly. Its sleeper cells lose the main source of surveillance and air pressure on them.

Where the

balance sits The short-term winner is clear: Iran and its allies. But "victory" rhetoric overstates what they have won. Iraqi nationalism has resisted domination by any outside power, including Iran, as the 2019 protests showed.

The more serious risk is not Iranian control but a weaker Iraqi state caught between strong militias and a reviving insurgency. The 2011 exit, followed by the rise of the Islamic State three years later, is the precedent everyone in the region remembers.

India's stakes India has no troops in Iraq, but it has a lot to lose:

1. Energy. Iraq is among India's largest suppliers of crude oil. Militia attacks on Gulf infrastructure, such as this month's strike on a Saudi pipeline, feed directly into India's import bill.
2. People. Millions of Indians work in the Gulf. The 2014 killing of 39 Indian workers abducted by the Islamic State in Mosul shows what a security vacuum can mean for them.
3. Connectivity. Projects like IMEC need a stable West Asia to make sense.