US-Iraq Agreement: Old Wine in New Bottles

Baghdad [Iraq], October 1: In 2014, Washington reached an agreement with Baghdad to send US troops to Iraq to fight the Islamic State ( IS ), extremist Islamist forces in Iraq and Syria. The two sides later terminated the agreement and replaced it with a new agreement on military and security cooperation. The core and key content here is whether the US military is still present in Iraq and whether Washington will maintain a military base in Iraq or not. If we use this content to distinguish the new agreement from the old agreement, we will see that the new agreement between the US and Iraq is only new in name but remains unchanged in substance.
That is because the fact is that the US will no longer station US troops on Iraqi territory. A representative of the US government confirmed this right after the US and Iraq officially announced the end of the old agreement and announced the new agreement.
In addition, other elements of the US strategic posture in the Middle East and the Gulf region are not affected by the termination of the bilateral agreement signed between Washington and Baghdad in 2014. The US still maintains the deployment of US troops in Syria. NATO still maintains a military campaign in Iraq with the participation of soldiers from many NATO members. Throughout the Middle East and the Gulf region, the US still has a dense network of military, air and naval bases. The wine is still old because Baghdad still wants to rely on Washington and vice versa, the US still needs Iraq.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper