Foreign Relations & International Law

Lawfare Daily: The U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq and the Future of the Iraq-U.S. Relationship

Scott R. Anderson, Omar Mohammed , Doug Silliman, Victoria Taylor
Friday, October 9, 2026, 7:00 AM

A panel of Iraq experts discusses what the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq means for the region.

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For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Dr. Omar Mohammed, a senior researcher with the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University and the author of the blog Mosul Eye, which anonymously documented life under ISIS control in Iraq; Amb. Doug Silliman, President of the Arab Gulf States Institute and a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq; and Victoria Taylor, Director of the Iraq Initiative and the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran at the U.S. Department of State.

They discuss the recent withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq, what lessons can be drawn from the experience with the prior withdrawal in 2011, whether the current Iraqi government is up to preventing a resurgence of ISIS and pushing back against Iranian interests without a U.S. military presence, and what it all might mean for the future of the two countries, 23 years after the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

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Scott R. Anderson

Scott R. Anderson

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Scott R. Anderson is a Senior Editor at Lawfare and General Counsel of the Lawfare Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Non-resident Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Omar Mohammed

Omar Mohammed

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Omar Mohammed, Ph.D., is the founder of the Mosul Eye, Director of Research at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and adjunct professor at Sciences Po Paris. He served as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage Specialist and advised the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh (UNITAD) on heritage crimes in Iraq. He is the author of Mosul Eye: A Scholar's Clandestine War Against ISIS. He lived in Mosul throughout the Islamic State’s occupation of the city.
Doug Silliman

Doug Silliman

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Ambassador Doug Silliman is president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He previously served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2016-19 and U.S. ambassador to Kuwait from 2014-16.
Victoria Taylor

Victoria Taylor

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Victoria Taylor is the Director of the Iraq Initiative and the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran at the U.S. Department of State.
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