GeoSpace Ep. 36 with Cenk Sagnic: The US withdrawal from Iraq and its implications for the country’s future

In the latest episode of The New Region’s GeoSpace podcast, host Mohammed A. Salih sits down with Cenk Sagnic, a US-based geopolitical analyst and expert in Kurdish and Middle Eastern affairs, to discuss what a full American military withdrawal from Iraq by September 30 would mean for the country’s stability, the Kurdistan Region, the militia disarmament process, and the broader competition between Iran, Turkey, and Israel for influence in Iraq.

 

Sagnic said that the geopolitical vacuum that a US withdrawal is supposed to create has, in his view, already been filled.

 

“The gap has already been created,” he said. “The vacuum can arguably be said to be already filled by some of the regional forces, and the competition among those regional actors is ongoing.”

 

The more consequential question, he argued, is not whether US troops leave, but whether Washington will maintain its political commitment to the Kurdistan Region afterward.

 

“Is the US going to change its entire positioning in the Iraqi theater by converting every interaction it has with Iraqi counterparts to an interaction with the Iraqi prime minister’s office in Baghdad?” he asked. “Is this going to be a mirroring of the Syria project on Iraq?”

 

On the Kurdistan Region specifically, Sagnic argued that the US has long failed to act as an effective protector on the ground.

 

“The US involvement in defending Kurdistan against Iran and Iran-backed militias has been very minimal,” he said, adding that the more important protection has always been political rather than military. “The biggest demands that the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] has been making to the US have been about the political pressure that Washington can have on Baghdad.”

 

He nonetheless acknowledged the symbolic value of American troops remaining. Their presence, he noted, creates a “collateral risk” that Tehran must factor in before striking the Kurdistan Region, as it may accidentally kill American soldiers.

 

On the differences between the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdish-majority Rojava (northeast Syria), Sagnic pointed to the Region’s constitutional status, its economic capacity, and its strategic location along emerging trade corridors from the Gulf to Europe as factors that make it harder to dissolve.

 

“Damascus is much more stable than Baghdad,” he said. “[Syrian President] Ahmed al-Sharaa’s control over Damascus is significantly stronger than what control [Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-]Zaidi has over Baghdad or any Iraqi prime minister will ever have.”

 

He warned, however, that the US trend toward supporting centralized states poses a long-term risk for the Kurdistan Region.

 

“There will always be a push for a more centralized Iraqi state,” he said. “The only way for Kurdistan to counter these efforts is by emphasizing its role in bringing stability to the region, not only in Iraq, but around Iraq as well.”

 

On the Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region, Sagnic said they face greater threats following purported US plans to involve them in its war with Iran.

 

“The genie is out of the bottle,” he said, saying that the US and Israel had named Kurdish opposition groups as potential ground forces against Iran during the recent war. “For Iran, whatever will happen might involve Kurdish groups currently stationed in Iraqi Kurdistan becoming the bastion of military action against the Iranian regime.”

 

“The time is ticking for Iranian Kurdish groups,” he added. “Their only chance is acting proactively before Iran takes decisive action.”

 

On Turkey, Sagnic distinguished between Ankara and Tehran as regional actors, noting that Turkey lacks Iran’s ability to sustain proxy networks and that its military presence in the Kurdistan Region remains confined to remote mountainous areas far from population centers.

 

“I don’t anticipate that military presence to expand from the mountains toward any deeper Kurdistan or Iraq,” he said. Nonetheless, he did foresee growing Turkish political influence.

 

On militia disarmament, Sagnic was dismissive of the September 30 deadline.

 

“It has been a big joke that the Iraqi militias will be disarmed, especially by a prime minister whose term into office hasn’t hit even two months yet when he made these promises,” he said. “Disarming them will require a resolution to the structural problems inside Iraq, and those are not in the offing.”

 

On Israel, he argued that Iraq has largely stayed off Tel Aviv’s target list because Iran has kept its Iraqi proxies out of the active fight against Israel, effectively holding them in reserve.

 

“What mostly secured the Iranian-backed militia groups from Israeli aggression was the inaction of the militias,” he said. “If they continue to stay inactive, they will not be prioritized by Israel as targets.”