The United States fully and formally withdrew from Iraq today. Twenty-three years after invading the country to topple dictator Saddam Hussein, America withdrew its last 2,500 soldiers from the country. The move allows Iraq to stay solidly in Iran’s sphere of influence.

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• U.S. forces originally invaded Iraq in 2003 as part of the war on terror. That initial occupation ended in 2011, but President Barack Obama sent troops back beginning in 2014 to fight the Islamic State.

• The withdrawal agreement was formulated under President Joe Biden in 2024. President Donald Trump has abided by the agreement with steady withdrawals. The 2,500 personnel in Iraqi Kurdistan were the last remaining.

• “I stand before you at this historic moment, when a nation reclaims its destiny,” Rear Adm. Liam Hulin said in a speech given in Arabic.

September 2026 was supposed to be the deadline for another withdrawal: Iran’s.

Iran-backed Shiite militias, functioning as an arm of Iran’s terror proxy network, have been actively skirmishing with the U.S. for years. Their attacks intensified after 2023 and the start of Iran’s war on Israel.

• The militias, formally known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (pmf), have technically been grafted into the Iraqi military but fight both the U.S. and regular Iraqi forces with guidance from Tehran.

• The pmf was most likely responsible for strikes on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline this month, sending worldwide oil prices soaring.

The Trump administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to disarm the militias completely. But the government doesn’t have the power to do so. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who took office in May, said this month that he has pushed the disarmament process to 2027.

A new Iranian puppet? While the U.S. is sticking to its evacuation plan, Iran has no apparent plans to leave.

• The New York Times wrote September 16: “The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 set the path for Tehran to dominate its neighbor and whetted its appetite to expand its influence across the greater Middle East.”

Gerald Flurry, the Trumpet’s editor in chief, scooped that New York Times article by over 30 years with his December 1994 article “Is Iraq About to Fall to Iran?” He wrote that when Saddam Hussein seemed like the Middle East’s most powerful dictator.

• Mr. Flurry made the same forecast in 2003, when the U.S. started managing the country as a colony.

He based his forecast on prophecies in Daniel 11 and Psalm 83. As of September 20, these are no longer future prophecies—they have now been fulfilled. Gerald Flurry was right about Iraq.

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