“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” Trump posted.
The announcement came on the same day as the first visit by Syria’s top diplomat to Iraq, during which the two countries pledged to work together to combat IS.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said at a news conference that “there are common challenges facing Syrian and Iraqi society, and especially the terrorists of IS.” He said the officials had spoken “in detail about the movements of ISIS, whether on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” during the visit.
Hussein referred to an operations room formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon at a recent meeting in Amman to confront IS, and said it would soon begin work.
The relationship between Iraq and Syria is somewhat fraught after the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of a coalition of Iran-backed factions, and Tehran was a major backer of Assad. The current interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003, and later fought against Assad’s government in Syria.
But Syrian interim Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani focused on the historic ties between the two countries.
Strengthening the partnership between the two countries “will not only benefit our peoples, but will also contribute to the stability of the region, making us less dependent on external powers and better able to determine our own destiny,” he said.
The operation and the visit come at a time when Iraqi officials are anxious about an IS resurgence in the wake of the fall of Assad in Syria.
While Syria’s new rulers – led by the Islamist former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – have pursued IS cells since taking power, some fear a breakdown in overall security that could allow the group to stage a resurgence.
The US and Iraq announced an agreement last year to wind down the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by September 2025, with U.S. forces departing some bases where they have stationed troops during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.
But the fall of Assad in December led some to reassess that stance, including members of the Coordination Framework, a coalition of mainly Shiite, Iran-allied political parties that brought current Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani to power in late 2022.
