The U.S. military has finished removing American troops and equipment from Iraq’s Erbil Air Base, formally bringing the U.S. chapter of Operation Inherent Resolve to an end, U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.

The withdrawal concludes the Iraq-based phase of the U.S.-led campaign launched in 2014 to defeat ISIS and places Iraqi forces in the lead for the country’s security. The wider fight against ISIS will continue, however. The coalition’s headquarters is moving to Jordan, while counterterrorism operations remain active in Syria.

“Job well done to the tens of thousands of American service members, diplomats, and civilian personnel who answered the call in Iraq,” CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said.

Cooper credited the personnel who served in Iraq with helping reduce ISIS to a level that no longer represents a systemic threat to the country. He said Iraqi security forces, including the Peshmerga and other forces in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, now have the leadership, capabilities and independence needed to address threats on their own.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell described the move as the official end of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq. He said the mission was shifting “from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship.”

Although the combat mission has ended, the Pentagon said the United States will continue offering Iraqi forces limited training and intelligence assistance. Iraqi troops and the Peshmerga will assume primary responsibility for containing remaining ISIS elements.

Located in northern Iraq, Erbil Air Base served as the principal hub for Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve. CENTCOM said the facility housed most of the approximately 1,500 American and coalition personnel involved in counter-ISIS operations.

The United States and its coalition partners began pulling out of federal Iraq last October as Washington and Baghdad worked toward a bilateral defense partnership. The final personnel and equipment left Erbil on Sept. 30, completing the transition. The move stems from an agreement reached by the two governments under the Biden administration in 2024 and continued under the Trump administration.

CENTCOM said Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve remains operational and will now be based in Jordan. American forces are also continuing counter-ISIS missions in Syria in cooperation with coalition members and the Syrian government.

About 4,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Jordan, where they will continue tracking the ISIS threat. Muwaffaq Salti Air Base houses American combat aircraft and has also come under attack during the broader conflict with Iran. An Iranian strike on the base in July killed three U.S. service members.

“As we step back and hand full primary responsibility for Iraq’s security to the Government of Iraq and the brave people of Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces stationed across the region will remain ready to respond to any ISIS threats that arise,” Cooper said.

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“Maintaining our vigilance and readiness is essential to protecting the U.S. homeland and strengthening regional security,” he added. 

The exit marks the end of the U.S. military presence reestablished in Iraq in 2014, after Iraqi authorities appealed for international help when ISIS seized large portions of the country. American troops had previously withdrawn in 2011, following the 2003 invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power.

For much of the past several years, Iraq hosted about 2,500 U.S. troops. Most left last year, while several hundred remained in the Kurdish-controlled north until the final evacuation from Erbil.

The U.S. withdrawal comes as Iraq confronts another major security concern: powerful militias aligned with Iran. Baghdad has tried to place weapons controlled by non-state groups under government authority, but some of the country’s most influential militias have rejected calls to disarm.

The Pentagon specifically listed those militias among the challenges Iraqi authorities will now be responsible for handling.

“The primary responsibility for addressing Iraq’s remaining security challenges, including ISIS remnants and Iran-aligned militias that undermine Iraqi sovereignty and regional stability, now rests with the Government of Iraq,” Parnell said.

The withdrawal also reduces the number of U.S. military targets inside Iraq after American forces there faced repeated attacks by Iran-aligned groups following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. During this year’s war with Iran, seven of the 18 U.S. service members killed in Iranian attacks were killed in Iraq, according to Fox News reporting.

The withdrawal has drawn sharply different reactions inside Iraq. Iran-aligned groups celebrated the U.S. departure, while officials in the country’s Kurdish region have raised concerns about the loss of American air-defense capabilities amid drone and missile threats.

Kurdish officials say their region has faced more than 1,000 Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks since the war with Iran began Feb. 28, adding to concerns over the removal of U.S. forces and air-defense capabilities.

Thousands of ISIS fighters also remain in Iraq and Syria despite the collapse of the terror group’s organized military threat. The Iraqi government has said its forces will continue operations against ISIS, while the Pentagon said the U.S. remains committed to preventing the group from reconstituting from Iraqi territory.

CENTCOM said U.S. and coalition forces elsewhere in the region will remain prepared to respond if ISIS again poses a threat.

“The United States supports a strong sovereign Iraq that secures its borders, protects its people, and serves as the foundation for deeper commercial, diplomatic, and security cooperation between our two countries,” Parnell said.

It was an extraordinarily awkward scene: a hometown birthday celebration in South Dakota for Kristi and Bryon Noem’s grandchild, held in April just weeks after the Daily Mail reported on Bryon’s cross-dressing fetish and explicit online exchanges with porn models.

While family members appeared to put on cheerful faces for the occasion, Kristi Noem’s 77-year-old mother pulled her aside to ask about the obvious tension surrounding the couple.

“What’s the deal? Are you going to get together again?” Corinne Arnold asked.

“No. No. We’re going to get a divorce,” her daughter replied, adding that she had hired an attorney.

The divorce papers were filed earlier that same month.

The Daily Mail reported Kristi’s plans to end the marriage in July, after speaking with her mother. Arnold said Bryon, 56, had already left the family home and was living about 20 miles away.

The filing, posted this week in Hamlin County court and citing “irreconcilable differences,” came as little surprise to residents of the couple’s hometown of Castlewood.

“Everyone took what the mom said to you as truth,” a local acquaintance of the estranged couple told the Daily Mail on Tuesday.

“She said they were splitting up and divorcing. So this is no surprise now.”

The 54-year-old former Homeland Security secretary, who was removed from her post in March, shared a series of social media photos over the weekend. She is now serving as a special envoy for the newly established Shield of the Americas and as a strategic adviser to Vancouver-based NovaRed Mining Inc.

Noem attended a pheasant hunting event in her home state with Greg Bovino, another former Homeland Security official and former Border Patrol commander who was also ousted.

She also took part in the Buffalo Roundup in Custer, South Dakota, where she was pictured on horseback.

Still, a Castlewood businesswoman said Kristi, a former governor, and Bryon—who operate an insurance company together—have largely avoided public appearances in their hometown in recent months.

“Kristi is still out at her ranch but has kept a low profile,” the source told the Daily Mail. “She put up a bunch of new fencing.”

“I haven’t seen Bryon at all,” she added.

Kristi and Bryon Noem married in 1992. Their relationship came under renewed scrutiny in 2023, when the Daily Mail reported on Kristi’s alleged affair with married political operative Corey Lewandowski.

Her close relationship with Corey Lewandowski has been well documented ever since.

And observers wonder about the next step for the newly single former Secretary.

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‘Corey is still married, but the last time they were pictured together they seemed very close,’ said one. 

Kristi and Lewandowski were pictured spending quality time in Minnesota amid her divorce in August, four months after she filed.

In images obtained by the Daily Mail, the two were seen cozying up to one another as they ate at an outdoor restaurant along the shores of Lake Minnetonka in Wayzata before enjoying a bike ride along the waterfront.

At one point during their outing, Noem was seen looking at something on her beau’s phone and laughing as they waited for food at The Grocer’s Table cafe.

‘Kristi and Corey are closer than ever,’ an insider told the Daily Mail after they were busted on the date-like outing.

It’s understood that Bryon, even after his own scandal broke, continued to message several of the women even after his lust for buxom fetish models was revealed to the world in March.

These included Shy Sotomayor, a Colorado-based dominatrix with massive 2500cc breast implants who was one of the several women to share their story with the Daily Mail.

Sotomayor was pictured and named in our April 10 article but she claims that Bryon got in touch with her five weeks later – as if nothing had happened.

‘May 17th, he texted me on iMessage. He’s like, “I’ve been a really bad boy.” I’m like, “Oh, I know. I know you’ve been a bad boy,”‘ Sotomayor told podcaster Spencer Macnaughton.

‘I sent him a very long message saying, you know, Bryon, I thought really hard on this. You obviously are very sick. You need help. If it’s not clear by now or after being America’s joke, I truly don’t know what is.’

Two more women have told the Daily Mail they, too, received messages from Bryon in the months after the bombshell expose.

One said the rancher and insurance mogul made small talk, refusing to be drawn on his future plans or say whether his marriage was over.

Another model said she didn’t respond because she was worried that Bryon was ‘fishing’ for information about the Daily Mail’s sources.

‘He’s still confused about who sent you the photos of him. I’m surprised he’s still reaching,’ she told us. 

Meanwhile, in their hometown, some residents were ready to turn the page on the scandal.

‘It’s more of a national story,’ one local told the Daily Mail. ‘The interest has kind of waned.

‘Honestly, I’m not sure people really care anymore what she’s doing now,’ the woman continued. 

‘She’s no longer in a position of real power. If she wasn’t such a striking person, I don’t think people around here would care at all.’

Greg Bovino, who joined Kristi last weekend, said she is herself ready to move on.

‘She’s a powerhouse, indefatigable in everything she does,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘Anything she puts her mind to, she will be a resounding success.’

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate from the Lone Star State, privately told conservative donors and lobbyists that the party’s heavily promoted midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month had hurt Republican polling numbers.

“To be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped,” Paxton said at the gathering last week, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “Right now, yeah, not good.”

Paxton is locked in a closely watched race against state Rep. James Talarico, who is seeking to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since 1988. Talarico leads Paxton by 2.9 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Paxton’s private assessment contrasts sharply with President Trump’s public comments about the convention’s impact. Speaking to reporters in Ireland on Sept. 13, Trump said: “I think the fact that we had such a successful convention really helped Ken Paxton. He was a big part of it. And look, I mean, he was a great attorney general. Ken Paxton was a great attorney general, and continues to be, and I think that counts for a lot … I hear that the convention helped Ken Paxton a lot.”

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Paxton campaign adviser Nick Maddux dismissed the report as “more manipulated nonsense from The New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.” He said the campaign’s latest poll, conducted last week, showed Paxton ahead by three points and argued that “every serious pollster” would say the candidate’s numbers have improved since early September. “Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump including when he comes to Texas this week,” Maddux said.

Trump is scheduled to appear Thursday at a Peterbil Motors facility in Denton, Texas, as part of a final campaign push aimed at helping Republican candidates win and preserving GOP control of the House and Senate.

Paxton, 63, defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in a bitter Republican primary runoff earlier this year. His campaign has unfolded against a backdrop of personal and political controversy, including the filing of divorce papers by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, on “biblical grounds.” She has since urged voters to keep the Senate seat in Republican hands. The attorney general was also impeached by the Texas Legislature in May 2023 on corruption charges, but was ultimately acquitted.

Over the weekend, The Post reported that the Senate Leadership Fund, an organization affiliated with Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has committed $100 million to support Paxton and plans to continue spending through Election Day.

“It’s a red wall kind of thing,” one source said, adding, “We only spend money where we think we can make a difference.”

A prominent American evangelical leader has criticized comments by a Palestinian official who described the Bible as a “Palestinian book.”

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.K. Husam Zomlot made the remarks earlier this month at the University of Bradford, as a revisionist narrative portraying Jesus as Palestinian has gained attention.

Zomlot’s assertion that the Bible is Palestinian—and that all Christians are therefore Palestinian—has drawn fierce criticism from historians and others who say it promotes a disputed account of the region’s past.

“The Palestinians aren’t the ‘people of the Book.’ When the ‘Book’ was written, the term Palestinian had not yet been coined,” Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), told News Media.

Hagee said the ambassador’s effort to claim Jewish religious and historical identity as Palestinian reveals what he described as weaknesses in the Palestinian narrative. He called the remarks “contemptible,” while warning that their impact depends on who accepts them and who challenges what he characterized as bigotry.

Hagee also rejected the idea that Jesus should be called Palestinian because Bethlehem is now located in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. He described that label as anachronistic, comparing it to calling television personality Dr. Phil Cherokee solely because he was born in Oklahoma.

“History also disproves what the ambassador is saying,” Hagee said. He argued that the Romans adopted the name “Palestine” in place of “Judea” in an attempt to erase the Jews from the land, roughly a century after Christ’s crucifixion.

Hagee, whose organization says it has more than 10 million members, also said that “no reasonable person should entertain its existence in the future,” citing the October 7 attacks and what he called the continuing efforts of radical Islamists to destroy the Jewish people.

Zomlot made the comments Sept. 3 while speaking with Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, at the University of Bradford. He recalled a private audience with the late Queen Elizabeth II, arranged through the British Foreign Office, during which he told her, “Jesus is our gift to you.”

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“The Bible is a Palestinian book and it has been used against us. It has been rewritten to be used against the people of the Book,” Zomlot said. He added that Palestinians are “the original Christians,” arguing that the saints named in Christian history came from his land and helped spread Jesus’ message around the world.

Critics say the Palestinian Authority has worked through organizations including UNESCO and the United Nations to influence the international historical narrative surrounding the land. They cite UNESCO’s 2016 designation of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron under the name “State of Palestine,” as well as its 2023 designation of Tell es-Sultan near Jericho as a World Heritage site in “Palestine.”

Critics also point to a 2021 U.N. General Assembly resolution that referred to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, only by its Muslim name, “Haram al-Sharif.” They cite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ 2024 statement that the site is the “exclusive property of Muslims,” along with the use of Arabic names for locations with longstanding Jewish associations, including Rachel’s Tomb in Nablus, or Shechem, which is called the “Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque.”

Ze’ev Orenstein, director of international affairs for the City of David Foundation in Jerusalem, told News Media that Islam emerged during the era of the Prophet Muhammad, about 1,300 years ago. Jesus lived roughly 2,000 years ago, while King David lived approximately 3,000 years ago, he said.

Orenstein emphasized that Jesus was Jewish, as were his disciples. He said Jesus knew the Hebrew Bible, observed the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws, and celebrated Jewish festivals such as Passover.

“To somehow say that Jesus was a Palestinian or that the Bible comes from ‘Palestine,’ no,” Orenstein said. “Jesus lived in a place called Judea, and Jews come from Judea.”

Orenstein accused Zomlot of appropriating Jewish and Christian religious history by assigning the foundations of those faiths to a country he said did not exist in its modern form during the time of Jesus.

“It’s an act of cultural and historical appropriation; it’s identity theft, an attempt to rewrite the foundations of faith, history, heritage, values and ideals for billions of people around the world. And so, it sets a very dangerous precedent,” he said.

News Media repeatedly reached out to Ambassador Zomlot for comment but did not receive a response.

At exactly 5.34am on March 20, 2003, US-led coalition forces began their unexpected invasion of Iraq, launching the conflict without a formal declaration or advance warning.

Within hours, the first wave of hundreds of thousands of troops entered the country, including around 45,000 British personnel. Iraq was then ruled by the authoritarian president Saddam Hussein.

The war continued for almost nine years and claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 coalition service members, among them 179 British troops. The full toll among Iraqi civilians and military personnel remains uncertain, although estimates commonly place the number of dead in the hundreds of thousands.

Then-US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair told the international community that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda ahead of the September 11 attacks—claims that were later shown to be false.

Washington and London persuaded their allies that the alleged threat justified removing Saddam from power and offered the prospect of freedom for the Iraqi people.

After Saddam was overthrown and later executed, the United States occupied Iraq, helped establish a Shi’ite-led government and became embroiled in a prolonged counterinsurgency. American forces officially left the country at the end of 2011.

The US military returned fewer than three years later, supporting Iraqi forces in the campaign against Islamic State, a conflict that ran from 2014 to 2017.

More than 20 years after the invasion began, the last American troops are now departing their remaining bases in Iraq.

The withdrawal has raised concerns that neighbouring Iran and its allied groups could gain even greater influence in a country where they have already built a powerful political and security presence.

Iraqi security specialists warn that the pullout—agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and implemented by Donald Trump’s administration while it wages war against Iran—could leave Tehran and its partners with greater freedom to operate. They also fear the changing landscape could create opportunities for other US adversaries, including Islamic State, to rebuild.

From Saddam Hussein’s execution and the fall of Baghdad to the emergence and defeat of ISIS, powerful images chronicle America’s two-decade military involvement in Iraq as the final US troops leave.