Established in 2014 to defeat ISIS, the Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve shaped the US military presence in Iraq for more than a decade. By late 2025, the United States had withdrawn most of its remaining troops, bringing an end not only to 10 years of direct involvement in Iraq’s security sector but also to more than 20 years of US-led security force assistance. At the same time, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) will conclude its mandate on December 31, 2025, ending nearly two decades of continuous political engagement. Taken together, these two departures will mark the first moment since 2003 when no major international actor is embedded in Iraq’s political or security governance structures.

Observers have understandably raised concerns about what this new landscape means: more room for Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), increased fragmentation between Baghdad and Erbil, economic pressure due to potential US sanctions related to Iraq’s importation of Iranian electricity and gas, and—always—the risk of ISIS cells reemerging in neglected areas. These risks should not be minimized. But the withdrawal of both US forces and UNAMI also creates opportunities.

Many of Iraq’s long-standing security problems do not flow solely from the strength of the PMF or from Iranian influence. They stem from the absence of a governance framework capable of managing a fragmented security architecture—an absence that has been reinforced, rather than remedied, by the US-driven approach to security force assistance.

Security force assistance, focused on training and equipping partner-country forces rather than undertaking complex institutional reform, has produced several highly capable Iraqi units. It has not, however, succeeded in building the foundations needed to sustain these units over time, let alone a security architecture capable of coordinating the patchwork of security actors inherited from decades of conflict and geopolitical entanglement.

For years, these weaknesses were partially masked by international support: military enablers provided by the US and political mediation by UNAMI. As both now step back, the underlying institutional reality becomes much harder to ignore. If there is an opportunity in this moment, it is for Iraq to shift focus from building its forces to strengthening the institutions needed to govern those forces. The international actors that remain should shape their engagement accordingly.

Security Force Assistance: Iraq as a Testing Ground

As Western governments became more cautious about large-scale interventions after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, security force assistance emerged as a preferred alternative. It allowed international actors to remain engaged while avoiding the costs and political sensitivities of deeper statebuilding. Iraq—alongside Afghanistan and parts of the Sahel—became one of the core testing grounds for this approach. Significant donor investment in training and equipping select units, most notably the Counter Terrorism Service, improved their combat effectiveness. Yet these units remained dependent on US enablers, including air support, intelligence fusion, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision fires, and logistics sustainment.

The prioritization of security force assistance over broader security sector reform also meant limited progress in two critical areas:

1. The development of sustainable security institutions capable of maintaining readiness, renewing doctrine, sustaining equipment, and adapting to emerging threats; and
2. The creation of an overarching security architecture able to coordinate Iraq’s diverse and fragmented security actors, including the Ministries of Defence and Interior, the Counter Terrorism Service, regional forces, and the PMF.

A clear example of the first dynamic is Iraq’s longstanding struggle to develop a codification system aligned with NATO standards—a basic but essential tool for managing inventory, spare parts, and lifecycle planning. The issue is even more visible when assessing the large amount of equipment Iraq acquired through foreign military sales. Much of this equipment is now difficult to keep operational not because the platforms are weak but because Iraq never built the maintenance and logistics systems required to sustain them.

The Ministry of Defence’s human resources structure illustrates this problem further. There are too many administrative employees and older high-ranking officers and not enough deployable forces. By some internal estimates, upward of 90% of the ministry’s budget is consumed by salaries, leaving little room for investment in modernization, maintenance, or institutional development.

This institutional void—unintended but predictable—created greater room for maneuver for Iran-aligned armed groups. Weak ministries reduced the state’s leverage over the PMF; the absence of coherent planning, budgeting, and oversight allowed militia networks to embed themselves in state institutions; and the reliance of elite Iraqi forces on US enablers strengthened the political argument of PMF-aligned factions that they, rather than the state, were the only dependable guarantors of national security.

Competition between the US and Iran also limited Iraq’s ability to integrate the PMF into its security structure. The trajectory of the proposed PMF law illustrates this dynamic well. Although many Iraqi officials recognized the need for a clearer legal and administrative framework for the PMF, the final version of the law was strongly opposed by the US, which saw it as formalizing a parallel security structure. Iran and PMF-aligned factions, by contrast, supported it. As a result, efforts to regulate or professionalize the PMF quickly became entangled in broader US–Iran competition. What started as a relatively pragmatic attempt at institutionalization instead became politically paralyzed. The episode shows how the presence of large external actors can distort the incentives for building coherent state authority, even when reforms are widely recognized as necessary.

It is important to note that several actors did attempt to promote a more institution-focused approach. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) worked on improving administrative capacity and governance processes; the NATO Mission Iraq focused on building defense institutions; the US Office of Security Cooperation–Iraq supported the development of government ministries; and the EU Advisory Mission in Iraq pursued internal security reforms. Yet the impact of these initiatives remained limited. This was partly because they operated with comparatively small footprints, but also because the dominant US presence shaped the security sector’s overall incentive structure. As long as operational support from the US underpinned Iraq’s security system, the political costs of deeper institutional reform could be deferred. In practice, the existence of a large-scale framework for security force assistance crowded out the slower, more complex work of security sector reform, even when individual programs were trying to advance it.

UNAMI did not resolve these structural gaps, but it did soften their impact. Through political dialogue, crisis deescalation, and a degree of oversight, it helped avoid deeper fragmentation. Its departure removes that stabilizing effect at a moment when Iraq’s institutions are already under pressure.

A Moment of Alignment—But Only Partially

Now, for the first time in years, there is a partial opening for institutional reform. With the departure of US forces and UNAMI, Iraq’s leaders no longer operate under the umbrella of powerful international actors. The sovereignty narrative is strong, expectations are high, and many officials recognize that the current security architecture cannot function indefinitely without stronger institutions.

With the US drawdown, Iraq’s institutional weaknesses now stand fully in the open. For years, US support papered over shortcomings in logistics, sustainment, planning, intelligence integration, and crisis coordination. UNAMI played a parallel role on the political side. Without this external scaffolding, the gaps cannot be ignored.

While Iran still wields enormous power in Iraq, its influence has weakened due to the internal pressures following Israel’s attacks in June 2025. At the same time, the US drawdown subtly shifts the politics around the PMF. For more than a decade, PMF reform was entangled in US–Iran competition, making the issue highly sensitive. With fewer US forces on the ground and Iran facing its own regional constraints, the PMF question increasingly appears as a domestic governance issue rather than a geopolitical one. That does not make it easy to resolve, but it makes it slightly less fraught.

Without UNAMI’s political visibility, the government may also find it simpler to pursue administrative coordination with PMF units. Technical reforms, in particular, sometimes move where political negotiations cannot.

But this moment is fragile, and three risks stand out clearly. First, Iran’s weaker regional posture does not guarantee reduced influence inside Iraq. Tehran has a long record of reinforcing political and security networks when under external pressure. Iraq remains one of the few arenas where it still holds significant leverage, which could lead it to double down as Western involvement recedes.

Second, Iraq’s political economy remains the hardest brake on reform. Patronage networks benefit from opaque procurement processes, discretionary appointments, and fragmented budgeting structures. Electoral cycles reinforce these dynamics rather than correcting them. Each election brings new coalitions, ministerial reshuffles, and senior leadership turnover across the security institutions, often resetting reform agendas before they can mature. Institutional continuity is sacrificed to political bargaining, making long-term planning, professionalization, and administrative discipline difficult to sustain beyond a single government cycle. This further widens the gap between the Iraqi public and political elites. The formation of a new government following the November 2025 elections will therefore be a critical test of whether politicians treat institutional reform as a strategic necessity or once again subordinate it to short-term political accommodation.

Third, international attention is drifting elsewhere. Europe is consumed by other crises, the US has shifted its strategic focus, and Baghdad’s narrative of stability could encourage partners to conclude that Iraq requires less political bandwidth. Assistance risks becoming thinner, more symbolic, and less targeted just as Iraq’s institutional exposure increases.

A Different Task for the Remaining International Actors

Some have argued that security force assistance failed in Iraq—and Afghanistan—not because of its underlying logic but because it was poorly implemented. Yet security force assistance often faces a more structural limitation: even when executed effectively at the tactical level, it remains ill-suited to addressing the institutional gaps that ultimately determine whether a security sector can function without external support. Future external engagement in Iraq must therefore shift decisively away from training and equipping forces toward building the institutions Iraq cannot yet sustain on its own.

This support should be technical, politically neutral, and compatible with the government’s sovereignty agenda. Priority areas include:

• Cross-ministerial cooperation and comprehensive crisis-management structures;
• Planning, programming, budgeting, and execution;
• Logistics, codification, and maintenance systems;
• Human resource management and career-path reform;
• Procurement governance and oversight; and
• Doctrine development and educational reform.

These functions will determine whether Iraq can maintain readiness and coordinate its security architecture without external scaffolding.

This also has implications for how Iraq engages emerging regional partners, including Gulf states. Increased Gulf involvement in Iraq—through investment, border cooperation, and infrastructure support—can contribute to stability, but only if aligned with Iraqi institutional frameworks rather than pursued through parallel channels. Without coordination, additional actors risk reinforcing fragmentation rather than mitigating it. Institutional coherence, not diversification of partners, is therefore the key variable.

Crucially, partners should avoid direct political pressure, particularly regarding the PMF. Administrative harmonization—shared logistics systems, standardized budgeting, interoperable procedures—offers a more realistic and sovereignty-friendly pathway than attempting political integration through negotiation. Administrative harmonization does not replace political reform, but in the current environment it is the only pathway that can realistically build habits of coordination and reduce fragmentation over time. Given limited resources and shifting global priorities, support should be targeted, high-quality, modest, and focused on areas where small interventions can make a durable difference.

The past decade was shaped by US enablers and UN political scaffolding. The coming decade will depend on whether Iraq can stand on its own—and whether its leaders are willing to accept the institutional discipline this requires. Progress will be uneven, and at times frustrating. Still, this is the most promising opportunity for durable institutional reform since 2003. Whether Iraq can take it remains an open question.