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Reduction of US Presence in Iraq Likely to Embolden Iranian Axis, ISIS
Military vehicles of US soldiers are seen at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq, Jan. 13, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/John Davison
JNS.org – The United States and Iraq have been engaged in talks aimed at transitioning the U.S.-led international military coalition in Iraq into a bilateral partnership, a process that has been delayed due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
These discussions will determine the future of U.S. military presence in Iraq, a country that Iran intends to take over with the help of its Shi’ite-backed militias, and which remains a critical battleground in the fight against Islamic State.
American officials have reiterated that U.S. military personnel are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government as part of “Operation Inherent Resolve” to advise, assist and enable the Iraqi security forces in their ongoing fight against ISIS. However, signs are growing that the Biden administration—as well as potentially any administration that follows it—would seek to either draw down or entirely remove the American military footprint in the country, with consequences for the entire region.
The United States currently maintains approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq. Additionally, around 900 U.S. personnel are stationed in neighboring Syria, where they continue to play a critical role in counterterrorism operations.
Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a former national security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, cautioned against repeating the mistakes of the past in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which enabled radical jihadist forces to fill vacuums.
“The primary reason the U.S. military is in Iraq is to prevent a return of the ISIS caliphate,” said Bowman, who was an active-duty U.S. Army officer, Black Hawk pilot and assistant professor at West Point. “Let’s hope this administration does not force us to endure a sequel of the tragic movie we’ve seen before—a premature U.S. military withdrawal that ignores the advice of commanders and neglects conditions on the ground,” he told JNS.
Bowman drew parallels to the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2021, both of which, he argued, led to significant security setbacks. “That misguided decision to withdraw from Iraq in 2011 catalyzed a series of events that resulted in the ISIS caliphate, eventually forcing the U.S. military to return later to Iraq at a higher cost,” he said.
He noted that the Biden administration risks making the same mistake by withdrawing troops without fully considering the consequences. “In both cases, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we saw a predictable and forewarned disaster,” he added.
The prospect of a U.S. military drawdown in or withdrawal from Iraq has also raised concerns about Iran’s influence.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran wants the U.S. military out of the way,” Bowman stated. He explained that the U.S. presence in Iraq acts as a significant impediment to Tehran’s strategic objectives, which include exerting greater control over Baghdad and using supply lines to arm its proxies in next-door Syria, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Iran would like to make Iraq like Lebanon, where Tehran uses its terror proxy to undermine national sovereignty and control government decisions,” he explained.
“If you think about it from a Sunni Iraqi perspective—if you have a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, what is that going to do? That is going to make you fearful that you have an Iranian takeover in Baghdad. Shi’ites aligned with Iran are going to be perceived as ascendant, and that’s going to make some Sunnis more susceptible to ISIS radicalization and recruitment. So, the obvious consequence, the predictable consequence, of a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq is more effective ISIS radicalization and recruitment of Sunnis,” Bowman warned.
He pointed to a July 16, 2024, release by U.S. Central Command that warned that “ISIS is on pace to more than double the total number of attacks they claimed in 2023.” The U.S. combatant command responsible for the Middle East said, “The increase in attacks indicates ISIS is attempting to reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”
“To make matters worse, if there is a credible perception that the prospective U.S. military withdrawal is in response to the more than 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since mid-October, then the take-home lesson for Iran and its terror proxies is that aggression against Americans pays,” added Bowman. “That will invite more attacks on Americans.”
Professor Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, echoed similar concerns regarding a potential U.S. withdrawal.
“The Iranians and their media outlets are pushing for a complete U.S. withdrawal,” he said. He also warned that a reduction in U.S. forces could lead to increased ISIS activity and further destabilize the region.
“It’s clear that if the United States pulls out, ISIS attacks will intensify,” he said, noting that U.S. forces are being targeted by radical Shi’ite Iranian-backed militias while they remain in Iraq to combat Sunni ISIS.
On Aug. 13, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that eight U.S. service members had been treated for traumatic brain injury and smoke inhalation following an Aug. 9 drone attack on the Rumalyn Landing Zone base in Syria, adding that an Iran-backed militia had launched the attack.
Gilboa also highlighted the strategic significance of the U.S. presence in Iraq, particularly in relation to Israel and other U.S. allies in the region. “Any move that strengthens Iran and its proxies harms Israel’s national security,” he stated.
Gilboa warned that if the U.S. withdraws, Iraq could become a failed state similar to Lebanon and Yemen, where Iranian-backed militias exert significant influence. “The American presence is a buffer that helps prevent the full takeover of Iraq by Iranian forces,” he explained.
Gilboa questioned whether planners in Washington were thinking about the long-term consequences of such an action.
He assessed that Washington could be keen to pull out of Iraq no matter who wins the next presidential elections in November, adding, “If Kamala Harris wins, she will not continue the Biden policies. Trump, for his part, has said that he will continue his actions from his first term, but that’s also unlikely. People change, and both could be susceptible to isolationist influences.”
As the future of the American footprint in Iraq appears uncertain, the stakes are high.
The potential for a U.S. withdrawal raises concerns that go beyond the resurgence of ISIS, and which touch on increased Iranian influence and effects on U.S. allies—including Jordan, which Iran has attempted to infiltrate, destabilize and use as an arms conduit via Iraq to the east.
The post Reduction of US Presence in Iraq Likely to Embolden Iranian Axis, ISIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine
PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly in New York. Photo: Reuters/Caitlin Ochs
The Palestinian Authority has restructured its so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis, in an effort to push the United States to repeal punitive legislation against the PA for its long-standing policy.
The Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
On Monday, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree revoking the “laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded,” according to the official PA news agency WAFA.
“All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation, and regulations are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs,” WAFA reported.
The decree means that the PA has changed its system such that payments to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorist attacks and their families will be based on their social economic status, not the acts they committed. Under the now-revoked program, Palestinians would receive more money for more severe terrorist acts — a policy that, according to critics, incentivized more terrorism.
However, Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov argued that the PA is “just restructuring the mechanism through which they pay terrorists so that they can claim it’s not them, it’s an ‘independent’ foundation doing it. An ‘independent’ foundation funded by the PA and whose board is appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying, “This is a new fraudulent trick by the Palestinian Authority, which intends to continue making payments to terrorists and their families through other payment channels.”
Palestinian officials told Axios they hope Abbas’s decision will improve relations with the Trump administration and with the US Congress in order for Washington to resume US financial aid to the PA.
Along with its policy change, the PA reportedly asked the US to repeal the Taylor Force Act, a 2018 law which prohibits US funding to the PA so long as it maintains its pay-for-slay program.
Critics therefore doubt the sincerity of the move. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank, noted that the PA has deceptively used “pay-for-slay” reform as a beginning chip in the past.
“The PA president … promised ‘pay-to-slay’ reform in 2020 to try to convince then incoming President Joe Biden to revoke 1987 legislation designating the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ‘and its affiliates’ as terror groups,” FDD wrote.
Aaron Goren, a research analyst and editor at FDD, wrote in response to Monday’s news that “pay-to-slay reform is certainly welcome at face value and demonstrative of the Trump administration’s power in negotiations. However, American officials should be wary of the PA’s steadfast tactic of leveraging pay-to-slay reform to get concessions from the United States and Israel. The PA is likely to make serious demands from both nations in exchange.”
The post Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Super Bowl Halftime Show Dancer Gets NFL Lifetime Ban for Displaying Palestinian Flag During Performance
A protester holding a flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” as rapper Kendrick Lamar performed during the Super Bowl halftime show at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A dancer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show has been banned for life from all National Football League stadiums and events for waving a combined Palestinian-Sudanese flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” during the rapper’s performance on Sunday night at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The NFL said the African American protester, who has not been identified, concealed the flag and unveiled it without prior knowledge by the show’s production team.
“We commend security for quickly detaining the individual who displayed the flag,” the NFL said in a released statement. “He was a part of the 400-member field cast. The individual hid the item on his person and unveiled it late in the show. No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.” The league added that the individual “will banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events.”
Toward the end of Lamar’s performance — after his track “Not Like Us” and right before his final song “TV Off” — the dancer waved the flag while standing on top of a car used as a prop in the performance. The car, a Buick Grand National GNX, inspired the name of Lamar’s latest album, “GNX,” and it was a key prop in the rapper’s halftime show performance.
“Sudan” and “Gaza” were written on the white sections of the flag held by the protester. A heart was drawn next to “Sudan” and a solidarity fist was depicted next to the word “Gaza.” The dancer, who wore a black ensemble matching the other dancers on stage, also jumped off the car and fled the stage while still displaying the flag. He waved it while standing on the ground near other dancers before security personnel tackled and detained him. He was then removed from the field and escorted from the stadium. New Orleans police told USA Today that as of Monday, the performer has not been formally arrested or charged.
The incident took place a day after three more Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as part of a ceasefire agreement in the war between the terrorist organization and Israel, and while a civil war rages on in Sudan.
The New Orleans Police Department said it “continues to work with NFL and the halftime production team to ascertain any affiliation the individual may have had with the halftime show.”
The entertainment company behind the halftime show, Roc Nation, said in a statement that “the act by the individual was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”
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CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that purports to advocate for Muslim Americans, has accused Israel of “moving the genocide from Gaza to the occupied West Bank,” lambasting the Jewish state for committing a litany of alleged human rights abuses in recent days.
In a Monday statement, CAIR accused Israel of displacing thousands of Palestinian civilians, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, murdering a pregnant woman and her baby, and unjustly raiding a Palestinian bookstore.
“The radical Israeli government is clearly trying to move its genocidal campaign of slaughter and destruction from Gaza to the West Bank, where Israeli occupation forces are driving thousands of Palestinians from their homes, destroying entire neighborhoods, kidnapping hundreds, and randomly shooting others, including an eight-months pregnant woman and her baby,” CAIR said in its statement. “Indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is a sociopath leading an army of war criminals, and our government must stop spending American taxpayer dollars on his latest campaign of murder, ethnic cleansing and destruction in the West Bank.”
In the 16 months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish state has ramped up operations to uproot terrorists in the West Bank.
These efforts intensified last month, when Israel launched a counterterrorism effort in the West Bank coined “Operation Iron Wall”” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, gunships, and drones operated in Jenin to extract Palestinian terrorists from the town and its adjacent refugee camps. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the operation was greenlit “on the directive of the security cabinet” with the aim of “bolstering security in Judea and Samaria [Israel’s preferred terminoloy for the West Bank].”
Jenin Mayor Mohammad Jarrar claimed that 150 buildings had been destroyed in the town as a result of the operation, suggesting that Israeli officials approved the operation with the intent of driving out the Palestinian population from the West Bank and annexing the territory.
Israel has long accused Iran of supplying armed factions in Jenin, particularly its refugee camp, with weapons. Palestinian terrorists have long been active in the city. Israel has been especially alarmed by the rise of the Jenin Brigades, a new armed group.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, alleged that Israel inflicted “forced displacement” on some 40,000 Palestinians. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings in recent months showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in Hamas’s Oc t. 7 atrocities, while many others openly celebrated it.
CAIR’s latest accusation against Israel was not its first time stepping into controversy. In the 2000s, the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
CAIR has accused Israel of committing atrocities beyond Gaza and the West Bank. In December, the Islamic group said the Jewish state was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” in Syria following the recent collapse of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime, despite the limited nature of Israel’s military operations in the neighboring country.
The post CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.