US Central Command (CENTCOM), the command that runs American forces across the Middle East, flew its last troops out of Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq on Wednesday 30 September 202612. The departure closed the Iraq leg of Operation Inherent Resolve, the counter-Islamic State mission, where most of the 1,500 American and coalition personnel on that mission in Iraq were based34.
The task force itself did not close. The Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF-OIR), the standing command that has run the campaign against Islamic State since 2014, has moved its headquarters to Jordan and continues working in Syria5. What ended on 30 September was the Iraq leg, not the campaign. The drawdown ran on a timetable Washington and Baghdad agreed in September 2024, through the handover of Ain al-Asad Airbase to the Iraqi army in January 2026. Admiral Brad Cooper, who commands CENTCOM, told the departing force that "because of your grit, sacrifice and professionalism, ISIS no longer poses a systemic threat to Iraq's national security"6.
At sea the commitment held; it did not grow. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt sailed on Sunday 27 September to relieve USS George Washington7. It is the fifth American carrier sent to this war, and the relief keeps the force at two strike groups rather than building to three8. Leaving the land, staying at sea.
Neither move was decided in the nine days it landed in. Erbil took two years to schedule and a carrier relief is a rotation, so a reader looking for intent should weigh the departure above any speech. The basing that made an Iraq-launched American strike available has gone, and nothing available in weeks replaces it. Tehran's own pressure track is still unspent: a bill for Iran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, filed under the fastest procedure Iran's parliament has, sits unscheduled on the Speaker's desk at the Majlis.
