Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with one of the passengers involved in subduing an attacker during a flight on a FlyDubai plane, after he arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 30, 2026. (Prime Minister’s Office)
(LONDON) — A man who was among a group of passengers who subdued an attacker on a flight to Tel Aviv on Wednesday was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he returned to Israel later in the evening.
The prime minister posted a video of meeting the passenger named Yaniv Hayun, who still had blood on his shirt from the encounter.
Yaniv and a group of other passengers aboard FlyDubai Flight 1073 were able to get into the cockpit after an unidentified pilot stabbed the co-pilot, Capt. Smit Machchhar and took control of the plane, Israeli officials said.
The suspect allegedly plummeted the plane in an attempt to crash it and kill everyone aboard, Israeli investigators said.
“And then there was a very sharp nosedive down, something that threw me to where the flight attendants stand in front of the cockpit, I flew sideways,” Yaniv said.
Yaniv said he placed the attacker in a chokehold and pulled him out. And then he quickly went for the plane’s controls and briefly flew the plane.
“And the plane started to level out a bit more, and then the (third) pilot told me he’s taking control from here,” he said.
The third pilot flew it to Saudi Arabia, where the plane landed and the passengers disembarked. Capt. Machchhar was being treated for his injuries and the suspect is in custody, officials said.
“I imagine if we entered the sky of the country it wouldn’t have been good,” Yaniv told the prime minister during their meeting.
(NEW YORK) — The execution of the only woman on Tennessee’s death row was paused at the 11th hour as a federal appeals court reviews the case.
The state has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the appeals court’s stay.
Christa Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday at 10 a.m. CT. She was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
In a 2-1 decision issued within two hours of the scheduled execution, Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote that a stay is necessary in the “interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution” in order to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before Pike was sentenced to death. The execution is stayed “until further order of this court,” the order stated.
In his dissenting opinion, Judge Richard Allen Griffin called the matter “another last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution.”
In an application asking the Supreme Court to vacate the stay, Tennessee Department of Correction Warden Kenneth Nelsen argued that Pike is not likely to succeed because her claim was “already unsuccessfully presented.” The state’s “strong interest in finality and the surviving victims’ right to closure” also require the high court to vacate the stay, he argued.
Members of Slemmer’s family — including her mother, stepfather and father — plan to attend Pike’s execution, according to Nelsen’s filing.
“It is far past time for Colleen’s family to receive the closure they seek,” the filing stated, asking the Supreme Court to vacate the stay of execution to “avoid rewarding Pike’s abusive delay tactics” and “prevent further trauma to Colleen’s family.”
In a June court filing challenging her execution, Pike argued that due to her history of rape and sexual abuse, being “the lone female in a vulnerable position surrounded by male corrections officers during the last days of her life will trigger her PTSD and result in a torturous execution or mental decompensation to the point she will be incompetent to be executed.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her claims. She subsequently filed an application for stay of execution, requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court review her claims alleging the method of execution would inflict cruel and unusual punishment because of her PTSD from childhood rapes and abuse. The Supreme Court denied that request on Tuesday.
Later that day, Pike filed a motion seeking to review her claim that her trial counsel provided ineffective assistance at sentencing and failed to introduce evidence of her history of child sexual abuse.
In a statement on the stay of execution, Pike’s attorney, Stephen Ferrell with the Federal Defenders Services of Eastern Tennessee, said, “The court has stayed this recognizing the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution.”
In 1996, Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder for beating, torturing and killing Slemmer, a fellow Jobs Corps worker from Knoxville, in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus.
Pike, who was 18 when she committed the crime, had told a friend she planned to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day” and admitted to committing the crime with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, according to court filings. Shipp was also convicted of first-degree murder for his role in the killing and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
While incarcerated, Pike was convicted in 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in the assault on an inmate, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
This photo shows the former Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, where a former Cornell University student alleges that she was drugged and gang-raped in 2024. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — As prosecutors reopened an investigation into a former Cornell University student’s allegations of being drugged and gang-raped at a fraternity house in 2024, a state-mandated survey of undergraduate students revealed that more than one-third of undergraduate women said they had experienced sexual assault during their time at the Ivy League university.
According to the school’s 2025 Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct (SARM), 35% of undergraduate women at the Ithaca, New York, school reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact involving force or incapacitation since entering Cornell. Among undergraduate men, 8% said they experienced the same.
“Despite a long history of actions to address sexual assault, culminating in Cornell’s Sexual Violence Framework … rates of sexual assault remain persistently high,” according to a summary report released in March by the Cornell University Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault (TFSA).
The report also found that alcohol played a part in “the majority of reported incidents,” with the perpetrator having consumed it prior to the incident in 62% of cases and the victim having done so in 55% of incidents.
“In 50% of cases, respondents reported being conscious but incapacitated by alcohol or drugs during all or part of the incident,” according to the report, with 19% saying they were “passed out or unconscious for some or all the time.”
Reported instances of sexual assault were significantly higher among Cornell undergraduate women who were “Greek-affiliated” compared to those who were not: 52% to 29%, respectively, according to the report.
“If there’s one takeaway from all of this, it’s that we know for certain that sexual assault is underreported,” Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, vice president of communications for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, told ABC News.
“Whether the numbers grew 2%, 3%, something like that, the reality is it’s probably much higher than that,” Kaleba said.
Kaleba said her group, which runs a national sexual assault hotline, estimates that 1 in 6 freshman women experience sexual assault in their first year of college, and that 1 in 4 undergraduate women and 1 in 14 undergraduate men experience rape or sexual assault by force or incapacitation before they leave school.
Tompkins County, New York, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said this week that his office is reopening an investigation into the 2024 alleged “gang rape” of a former female student by seven former and current members of the Chi Phi fraternity after the alleged victim, identified only as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit earlier this month, sparking outrage when news of the suit became public.
Cornell’s Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus after the Oct. 19, 2024, rape allegations were made. Trey Robb, the interim executive director of Chi Phi fraternity, said in a statement that all the accused members were kicked out of the Cornell chapter within three days of Jane Doe filing her police report in 2024.
Three of the defendants named in the suit have denied the allegations through their attorneys.
“Any suggestion that the University did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell said in a statement Monday, in part.
In an earlier statement, Cornell said it conducted a thorough Title IX investigation of Jane Doe’s allegations. “At its conclusion, the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell,” the university’s statement said.
Van Houten said in a statement that his office is considering whether to bring criminal charges related to the incident, though he said the allegations in the civil complaint are “dramatically different” than the woman’s statement to police two years ago. He further said that his office did not bring charges in 2024 because the woman’s statement to Cornell police officers at the time did not allege she was drugged without her knowledge or that she did not consent to engage in sexual activities.
“It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” Van Houten told ABC News. “We want to reexamine whether there’s additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct.”
Kaleba told ABC News that some victims of sexual assault often do not recall exact details of what occurred to them until years later.
“One of the first things that people will say on the hotline is, ‘I think something happened,'” Kaleba said. “And so what we want is some black-and-white narrative that says everybody absolutely recognizes what sexual assault is and it’s this and it’s that, and the victim must also know exactly what happened to them and retell it to the detail with exactly the right emotion for the remainder of their lives.”
“That is profoundly unrealistic and another avenue to blame victims,” according to Kaleba.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks onstage on the first day of the 2026 Republican National Convention on Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas, Texas. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Texas GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton told donors at a private fundraiser last week that President Donald Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month had hurt him politically, according to audio obtained by The New York Times.
In a recording, a person believed to be Paxton is asked, “Do you feel like he’s a little bit of a drag?” It’s not clear in the audio about whom the questioner is referring.
“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good,” someone reported to be Paxton said in response to the question.
Three other people with knowledge of the event confirmed to the New York Times that Paxton was at the private fundraiser — with two of those people recalling Paxton’s response about the GOP midterm convention.
The Paxton campaign pushed back against the report, calling it “manipulated nonsense.” When ABC News asked specifically whether the campaign was claiming the audio was manipulated, the Paxton campaign did not respond.
ABC News reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a response.
Paxton’s comments are noteworthy, given how he has aligned himself with Trump, earning his endorsement ahead of the Texas Senate runoff earlier this year. Trump backed Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary.
A recent ReconMR Texas Poll found that the Senate race in Texas remains tight, as 49% of likely voters said they would vote for Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico if the election were held today and 43% said they would vote for Paxton.
During the GOP midterm convention, Trump both praised Paxton and mocked him for his appearance.
“He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. But you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America, and he deserves to be your next senator,” Trump said in early September.
Paxton’s comments about the midterm convention also paint a larger picture of how some GOP candidates feel Trump’s low approval rating, along with the political environment where voters are concerned about prices, could hurt them politically.
Several Republicans running in competitive statewide and federal races are joining growing calls in their party to end the war in Iran, including battleground Senate candidates Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio.
Trump is scheduled to travel to Texas later this week to deliver economic remarks at a truck manufacturing company — a visit that comes five weeks before Election Day and as Texas is home to many key races.
The fraternity house at the center of a rape allegation stands on the campus of Cornell University on Sept. 30, 2026, in Ithaca, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) —A Cornell University student detailed the night that she was allegedly sexually assaulted in a statement to police two years ago — describing that she was felt incapacitated, saying she declined to participate in some of the sexual activity and that the incidents at Chi Phi fraternity house “felt like coercion,” according to a copy of the police report obtained by ABC News.
The developments in the case, which sparked a furor, come in the wake of the alleged victim in the case filing a lawsuit claiming she was gang raped and the local district attorney saying he would reopen the case.
In the Nov. 15, 2024, statement, she appeared to suggest some of the activity was consensual but detailed multiple instances where she declined to participate in certain sexual acts suggested by the men.
The woman’s statement was central to a decision by the Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten not to bring charges in 2024 and he said that the allegations in the civil suit are “dramatically different” than those in the statement.
In an interview with ABC News this week, Van Houten described the allegations as “morally disturbing” but argued Jane Doe’s 2024 account of the incident suggested that she consented to the sexual activity.
He said that she did not withdraw her consent, and that when she raised concerns, the fraternity members “stopped and did not pursue what they were doing.”
According to her 2024 statement, Jane Doe did say that shat one point she said “no to the foursome” one of the fraternity brothers proposed, she said in her statement. At another point she recalled “a group of multiple men” walking into a room and “I was instantly horrified, and I remember squealing out loud and running across the room and hiding under the covers on another bed,” the statement said. “I was horrified because I was really embarrassed that these individuals had seen me completely naked.”
Jane Doe used the word “rape” to explain why she took an additional hit of ketamine.
“I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out so my thought was, if I do Ketamine again maybe I will pass out. My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with Rape,” the statement said.
The men persisted, according to her statement.
During the final threesome, Jane Doe said, “I remember being totally disgusted at the situation, and I felt very tired and intoxicated. I would say that my level of overall intoxication was about a 8 out of 10 level of intoxicated. I would say that it was the most intoxicated I’ve ever been in my life. I felt like I was unable to make any decision because of how intoxicated I was,” the statement said.
“To me, that felt like coercion,” she wrote in the statement. “Also I felt like due to my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.”
She recalled being so “extremely tired” she simply uttered, “Sure” when a group of men asked to snort ketamine off of her body, according to her statement. “[The] group of men all started pouring various things all over my body. I couldn’t tell what they were pouring on me, as I had my face covered with my hands.”
Jane Doe said she slept until 10 a.m. and was driven home by the same Chi Phi member who had originally invited her to the house and who she said had participated in the sexual acts.
By the time she woke up that Sunday afternoon, “I was made aware that what had happened to me at Chi Phi was becoming public knowledge,” she wrote in the statement. “It was made clear to me by several friends that the members of Chi Phi were bragging about having an ‘eightsome’ with me. Some rumors said it was ten people, but nonetheless, it was now obvious that everyone knew it was me that this had happened to.”
In the civil lawsuit, filed earlier this month, the woman alleged that she was drugged, assaulted and gang raped by seven former and current members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell. The lawsuit has drawn outrage and calls for an outside investigation into the matter.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday called for an outside investigation into Cornell University’s campus culture and its response to allegations by the student. Cornell’s Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus after the alleged Oct. 19, 2024, incident, though none of the individuals allegedly involved faced criminal charges, according to the DA.
Cornell University has said the former student’s allegations were investigated by the university’s Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards under the school’s Title IX policies.
On its website, the university said the investigation was conducted over several months and included hearings before a panel of trained faculty and staff.
“At its conclusion, the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell,” the university said.
Cornell said it took the reports “very seriously” and conducted a thorough investigation but said: “At the same time, responding to an incident of this seriousness cannot end when an investigation is completed or sanctions are imposed. We have an obligation to ask what more we can learn, what we can do better, and how we can reduce the likelihood that anything like this happens again.”
Attorneys for multiple fraternity brothers named as defendants in the civil lawsuit have denied the allegations in the complaint.
Close-up of a mosquito biting human skin. (Joao Paulo Burini/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — As cases of dengue fever continue to rise in Florida, public health specialists are worried the true number of infections may be greater.
For the week ending Sept. 19, at least 190 cases of locally acquired dengue have been confirmed in the state, an increase of 38 cases from the week before, according to data from the Florida Department of Health (DOH).
Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, is reporting the highest number of cases at 170 followed by Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Pasco and Pinellas counties, DOH data shows.
“There’s evidence of local transmission of dengue in several counties in Florida,” Natalie Dean, an associate professor of biostatistics and informatics at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told ABC News. “Dengue is not endemic to the United States. That means that it doesn’t typically cause local transmission.”
She added, “There can be occasional outbreaks in the U.S. but this one is notable for its size.”
Last week, DOH reported the state’s first death from dengue fever this year but did not provide any details about the patient including name, age, sex or residence.
Three counties — Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas — declared local states of emergency last week. These allow local governments to waive normal procedures, access emergency resources and strengthen efforts to control mosquito populations.
Pinellas County crews have been going door to door and spraying areas with high mosquito presence, according to local ABC News affiliate WFTS.
“I don’t recall a [period] of time when it’s been this high in such a sort of concentrated area before,” Cameron Wolfe, an infectious diseases specialist and a professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, told ABC News.
Wolfe said there may be an underestimate of the true number of cases in Florida. Cases of dengue can be mild, and people may recover on their own or never be tested. Because dengue can resemble a flu-like illness, patients may never suspect the source of their infection.
Additionally, he said that reporting of confirmed cases to either local state departments or the CDC can lag.
“For every case that we know, there’s going to be a bunch that we never find out about,” Wolfe said.
Dean added that people can be infected with dengue multiple times over the course of their life, but it’s usually the second or later infection that is more severe, leading to further underreporting.
“I always think of like the top of an iceberg,” Dean said. “We’re only capturing some of the some of the cases.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday that the agency is “closely tracking dengue activity” and the “unprecedented” number of cases in the Tampa area.
The CDC also said they’ve provided $800,000 in emergency funds to help with the response.
“Because the types of mosquitoes that spread dengue, Aedes aegypti, are common throughout many areas of the United States, continued local spread of dengue is possible,” the CDC statement said. “The best way to prevent dengue is to protect yourself from mosquito bites by using EPA-registered insect repellant, wearing loose fitting clothes, and controlling mosquitoes in and around your home, such as dumping water.”
Some research has shown that climate change could be expanding the geographic range and severity of dengue fever.
Rising global temperature coupled with more rainfall and humidity — leading to standing water pools that serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes — could increase the number of cases.
“Global warming and climate change, in fact, leave places like Florida more wet and more capable of housing these mosquito vectors, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a little more of a perpetual thing,” Wolfe said.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A parent has been arrested after a toddler was found with a loaded gun inside a Michigan daycare facility, authorities said.
A teacher noticed the gun Monday morning and took “immediate action,” Canton Police Chief Joseph Bialy told ABC Detroit affiliate WXYZ.
Officers then responded to the incident in Canton, just outside of Detroit, and secured the weapon, according to Canton police.
No injuries were reported.
Charges against the parent were not immediately clear, but the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office told ABC News the parent is expected to be arraigned on Thursday.
“The message here is that no matter how busy our lives are, we have a great responsibility if we’re going to choose to own a firearm,” the chief told WXYZ.
Guns are the No. 1 cause of death for children in the U.S., according to Everytown For Gun Safety.
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence and international security on Sept. 23, 2026, in New York City. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A nonprofit artificial intelligence safety group has sued OpenAI over a July incident in which the company’s autonomous AI agents accessed the computer systems of another firm, Hugging Face, without authorization during a cybersecurity test.
Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST) filed the lawsuit late Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging roughly 700 of the company’s AI agents participated in the breach.
The AI agents stole credentials, uploaded malicious files and gained access to parts of Hugging Face’s production infrastructure, the lawsuit claims.
A spokesperson for OpenAI said the lawsuit was “without merit” in a statement to ABC News.
“Hugging Face was a serious incident and we’ve taken a series of actions in response to it, but this lawsuit is completely without merit,” said Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI.
The lawsuit seeks a court order barring OpenAI’s AI agents from accessing third-party computer systems without permission and requiring changes to what LASST calls unsafe AI development practices.
LASST “suffered harm” as a result of the hack into Hugging Face, the lawsuit says. In the aftermath of the incident, the group was “required to divert resources from its normal activities to educate regulators, civil society, and the public about the facts, legal issues, and potential dangers,” according to the lawsuit.
The self-directed hack into Hugging Face took place as OpenAI tested the capabilities of a pair of its AI models, the company said in July, describing how the technology had escaped and gained access to the open Internet.
A swarm of about 700 AI agents, in turn, hacked into AI firm Hugging Face and attempted to cover their tracks as they sought to complete the test, according to reports issued by research organizations METR and Redwood Research.
“We care very deeply about AI safety,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X in August. “We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime.”
“This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we’ve long believed: AI safety won’t be solved by any single company working in secret. It will be solved in the open, collaboratively, with broad access to AI for every defender, everywhere,” Clem Delangue, the co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, said in a statement in July.
Hugging Face did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment about the lawsuit filed against OpenAI.
Altman dialed back the pace of his company’s AI development earlier this month. “The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened,” Altman said in a post on X at the time.
OpenAI signaled further restraint toward its AI models this week, pausing the release of its latest AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, due to security concerns.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to announce on Wednesday that the Pentagon will cut 20% of positions reserved for generals and admirals, doubling a reduction he ordered last year as part of a broader effort to shrink the military’s senior ranks, according to two U.S. officials.
Hegseth is expected to announce the move during a “State of the Force” address on Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he will outline his agenda for the force over the coming year. The new target doubles the 10% overall reduction in general and admiral positions he ordered in 2025.
The speech follows Hegseth’s appearance at Quantico last year, when he abruptly summoned the military’s top brass from around the world and used the address to rail against what he framed as declining standards, demanding there would be “no more beardos” and “no more fat generals.”
Much of the speech was also devoted to culture-war grievances.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” Hegseth declared last September to a room full of the military’s top leaders.
At the time, the Pentagon also directed all of its troops to watch video of the speech.
This year, commanders across the services were asked to nominate mostly junior and mid-ranking troops to attend, according to officials familiar with the matter.
The nominees are expected to include high-performing service members, such as troops recognized for major achievements or winners of military competitions, according to officials. Those selected must also be in compliance with military fitness and body fat standards, a routine requirement for official travel and attendance at major events.
It is unclear exactly how the new cuts will be carried out, or whether such a dramatic reduction amid the Iran war would disrupt day-to-day military operations. The services have already been reducing the number of senior officers in part by consolidating commands and organizations, allowing some positions previously held by two generals or admirals to be overseen by one.
The cuts can also mean some commands could be downgraded to a lower level rather than eliminated outright or different parts of the military being shut down completely.
The services have been directed to complete those cuts to the most senior ranks, which can end up being dozens of roles by January, one official explained.
There are currently 841 active-duty flag officers.
The move also follows a broader purge of the military’s senior ranks under Hegseth, who has fired or sidelined a string of top officers without publicly explaining the rationale. Among them was Gen. Randy George, who was removed as the Army’s top officer; Gen. CQ Brown, who was fired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who was removed as chief of naval operations.
Before leaving the administration in September, then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll repeatedly warned the White House that Hegseth’s removal of senior officers and efforts to block others from advancing were thinning the Army’s leadership ranks, according to people familiar with the situation. Driscoll told Trump the moves were leaving the service with a smaller pool of experienced officers to fill future senior commands.
The U.S. military is expected to complete the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday after a 12-year presence prompted by the war against the Islamic State militant group ISIS.
It will be the second time that the U.S. has withdrawn all of its military forces from Iraq.
In 2011, the U.S. pulled out after an eight-year presence that began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. U.S. troops returned in 2014 as ISIS conquered wide swaths of Syria and northern Iraq and threatened the approaches to Baghdad. The U.S. defeated ISIS militarily in 2019, but the continued U.S. presence was seen as a necessary one to prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
The withdrawal was negotiated with Iraq by the Biden administration in 2024, and the Trump administration has continued with the withdrawal plan that set Sept. 30 as the final pullout date. But the U.S. war with Iran has created a different regional situation for Iraq and the United States than when the deal was agreed upon.
Iraq and Iran have a shared Shiite cultural heritage and Iran has militarily assisted Shiite-militias inside Iraq. It remains a question how far Iran will be able to increase its presence and influence in Iraq and whether ISIS could become resurgent.
In recent years, there had been about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Throughout this year, the U.S. has been consolidating its positions throughout the country into northern Iraq, but has quietly been moving forces out of Erbil since the start of the war with Iran. In recent months the reduction of forces proceeded along and there has been a very small U.S. presence in northern Iraq for quite some time.
Earlier this year the U.S. withdrew its forces from eastern Syria. That was an unplanned withdrawal spurred by the new Syrian government’s push against the United States’ Syrian Kurdish partners.
With Wednesday’s expected withdrawal, the U.S. will once again end a military presence inside of Iraq that has stretched for more than two decades and was the scene of approximately 4,500 U.S. military deaths, the vast majority occurring between 2003-2011.
