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The Occupation Is Over

US forces are out of Iraq, 3 days early. Trump endorses al-Zaidi. Cash dollars are moving again. What is left before the IQD moves is Iraq's work.

Sunday, September 27. Iraq's Foreign Minister, Fuad Hussein, told the country that American forces have completely finished their withdrawal, the Kurdistan Region included. National Security Adviser Qassem al-Araji stood behind him. Iraqi forces now carry full responsibility for the country's security, and talks continue on the terms of a new bilateral relationship with Washington, security and economic both.

That is 3 days ahead of the September 30 deadline Washington and Baghdad reaffirmed in July, and 23 years after the tanks came up from Kuwait. A day earlier, the cabinet advised the state shut for 4 days of what it calls Sovereignty Days, Wednesday September 30 through Saturday October 3. Across those same 72 hours, Donald Trump said of Iraq's Prime Minister, "I endorsed him," the government's spokesman said American cash dollars are coming back into Baghdad, and the 2027 budget cleared its first ministerial vote.

Soldiers gone. Bases handed over. Air defenses packed out. What they leave behind is the question for anyone holding the IQD, and today we walk through it in that order.

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The Withdrawal Is Done

Let's start with the scale of what was handed back. The US Embassy's support post at Baghdad airport was signed over last week, as we covered in Iraq Invites America's Banks. Since then the rest followed. Every base and headquarters is now in Iraqi hands, according to Saad Maan, who heads the government's security media cell, and no foreign forces stay beyond September 30. American air defenses that sat in Erbil are gone with them. On the 30th the coalition headquarters closes, per the Commander-in-Chief's office, and no foreign military base will remain on Iraqi soil.

Kurdistan felt it in its payroll first. A 4-year funding agreement between the coalition and the Peshmerga ministry expired on September 21, stepping down 25% a year to nothing, and its last installment went out on September 24. Washington's counter-ISIS budget for 2027 carries no line for the Peshmerga at all, against $61 million this year. Last payment made. Budget line gone. Nothing replacing it. Erbil now pays its own forces, or asks Baghdad to.

In August, in Nothing Left to Resist, we asked what a resistance resists on October 1. Nobody waited for the date. That question now arrives 3 days early, and the armed factions have to answer it without their oldest reason for carrying weapons.

The Four Presidencies

Per a source speaking to an Iraqi news platform, the heads of Iraq's four presidencies meet today: the Prime Minister, the President, the Speaker of Parliament and the head of the judiciary. Three files sit on the table. Weapons first: the government's new plan to put every arsenal under state control. Then the fallout from American sanctions on Iranian airlines. Then the ministries that still have nobody seated. One source, and we carry it as such.

Take the weapons file first, because it runs on a date. Collection starts September 30. Three factions have folded into the plan, and Kataib Hezbollah and Nujaba still refuse, the split we laid out in No Extension. What changed on Sunday is the cover. For years those two factions pointed at American bases to justify their arsenals. As of Sunday, the Foreign Minister says there are none left to point at.

Trump, describing his meeting with al-Zaidi at the UN, put it plainly: "I endorsed him, the Iraqi prime minister, he's a fantastic guy." Then an Iraqi lawmaker said Washington had lifted its objection to al-Zaidi's nominee for Deputy Prime Minister, after the Prime Minister gave guarantees during his visit. Nobody named the nominee, and nobody published the guarantees. Earlier this year Washington blocked Laith al-Khazali, a faction nominee, from that same seat. Al-Zaidi has 14 of 23 ministers in place. A lifted objection means at least one of the empty chairs can now fill with Washington's consent.

The Flights Stay Grounded

On Friday, Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah airports stopped receiving Iranian flights under the new American aviation sanctions. A senior Iraqi government source says Washington warned Baghdad directly that Iraqi airports and companies servicing sanctioned Iranian carriers could face sanctions themselves. Baghdad is now asking Washington for narrow exemptions: pilgrims, medical cases, students. On Sunday one Iranian VIP flight carrying six Iraqi passengers was cleared to land in Baghdad. Permission first. One plane through. Ban intact. The exception was negotiated, and the rule stood.

Scott Bessent explained why the pressure lands everywhere at once. After Treasury's designations on banks and aviation providers, he wrote on Saturday, "teams were dispatched across the globe" to demand action from governments. Turkey and Oman stopped Mahan Air, and the UAE halted every Iranian airline. Iraq turned them away at four airports.

That is the second file on today's table, and Baghdad has already shown which way it runs: exemptions for pilgrims and patients, negotiated one by one, with the ban itself left standing.

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The Dollars Keep Coming

Here is the line that tells you how Washington reads Baghdad now. On Saturday, government spokesman Haidar al-Aboudi told the state news agency that al-Zaidi had reached an understanding with the United States on the continued shipment of physical dollars, with a new consignment arriving in the coming days. He tied it to Iraq's progress in controlling how dollars are distributed.

In April, Washington halted a cash shipment of about $500 million and paused parts of its security cooperation with Baghdad, as pressure over faction attacks. In A Sovereign IQD we covered the claim that the shipments would stop again in October if the weapons date was missed, and the denials that followed. What arrived instead, 3 days before the date, was the promise of a new shipment.

Baghdad's money changers priced it. A hundred dollars opened Sunday at 155,250 dinars in Baghdad's main exchanges, down from 156,800 the session before and off the 160,000 it touched a week earlier. Erbil sold at 155,350. At the Central Bank, the official rate is unchanged at 131,000.

Sovereignty Days

Official working hours across state institutions are suspended from Wednesday, September 30, to Saturday, October 3, by cabinet decision. Baghdad describes October 1 as the start of full national sovereignty. October 3 is National Day, the anniversary we taught in No Extension. Weeks ago the Finance Ministry claimed the date for money, as we covered in A Sovereign IQD. Now the whole state gets the week off to mark it.

Budget work kept moving right up to the holiday. On Sunday the Ministerial Council for the Economy approved the draft 2027 federal budget and referred it to the full cabinet, a document signed by Finance Minister Faleh al-Sari, with non-oil revenue and results-based spending as its stated priorities. Parliament's date is October 15. No total, deficit, oil price or exchange-rate assumption has been published yet, and we will not print one until it is. It is running the drafting path we mapped in Iraq's 2027 Budget Enters Production.

And one file from 1990 got a deadline. At the UN, al-Zaidi and Kuwait's Crown Prince, Sheikh Sabah Khalid Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, agreed a joint working team to review the outstanding files between Iraq and Kuwait and deliver a roadmap to both leaderships within 30 days, meeting in Baghdad and Kuwait in turn. Their statement does not list the files. Your IQD's long fall began with the invasion of Kuwait, and the last loose ends of that story now have a 30-day deadline.

Tehran Hears No

Iran's proposal to trade Hormuz for an end to the blockade went nowhere. "They made a proposal, but I rejected it," Trump said on Saturday, and Washington called the offer cynical. By Sunday he said he expects talks to resume this week, and that Iran had overplayed its hand. Iran's foreign minister answered that Tehran is fully prepared for the war to resume. And the 4 to 5 day ultimatum Mohsen Rezaei gave Washington last week has run its course with the blockade still in place.

Keep that beside the Iraqi file. Next door, Iran lost its airline routes into Iraq this week and its offer was rejected in public. Baghdad got an endorsement and the promise of a cash shipment.

The Read

For most of the last 23 years, every Iraqi dinar changed hands in a country with American soldiers on its soil. As of Sunday, Iraq's Foreign Minister says there are none left.

That matters for the currency you hold. The notes in circulation today are the series swapped in under occupation in October 2003, when Saddam's notes were exchanged one for one. Every dollar Iraq earns from oil has cleared through an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2003, set up by the occupation authority that contracted Iraq's trade banking out to a foreign consortium, as 23 Years in Baghdad laid out. And the case for holding the IQD where it is has kept coming back to one list. Militias carrying their own weapons. Airports serving sanctioned carriers. Dollars leaking across the border to Iran.

Now watch what Washington did on the weekend its soldiers finished leaving. It warned Iraqi airports they could be sanctioned for servicing Iranian planes, and four of them stopped taking the flights. The dollar deliveries it froze in April are moving again, agreed on Saturday on the strength of Iraq's own controls over how dollars are handed out. Washington also lifted its objection to a seat in al-Zaidi's cabinet after the Prime Minister gave guarantees. And the President endorsed al-Zaidi by name.

With the soldiers gone, the pressure Washington keeps on Baghdad runs through the dollar. This weekend that pressure eased: money released, an objection lifted, an endorsement on the record.

What still stands between the IQD and a new rate is now Iraq's own work, on Iraq's own dates. Weapons collection starts Wednesday. The empty ministries need names. The budget reaches parliament by October 15. And the rate itself is the Central Bank's to set, whenever it chooses to.

The occupation ended on Sunday. What is left on the list, Iraq now finishes itself.

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