Once again, the Pentagon has acknowledged that its footprint in the Middle East is bigger than it has claimed for years. In fact, after years of claiming that the total number of service members deployed to Iraq and Syria was about 3,400, the Pentagon acknowledged this week that 4,500 U.S. troops are in the two countries this holiday season.
U.S. military officials had long claimed that 900 American troops were deployed to Syria and another 2,500 were in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led mission to defeat the Islamic State group, or ISIS.
But Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week that the true number of US troops in Syria is close to 2,000. Monday, Ryder confirmed that more than 2,500 U.S. troops are deployed to Iraq, although he did not specify the exact number.
“In Iraq, there are at least 2,500 U.S. military personnel deployed in support of OIR and the D-ISIS mission, plus some additional temporary enablers deployed on a rotational basis,” Ryder said in a statement. “However, due to operations security and diplomatic considerations, we do not have any more specifics to provide.”
Much about the relationship between the United States and Iraq is shrouded in secrecy. The two countries reached a bilateral security agreement earlier this year, but U.S. government officials have declined to say if any American service members will withdraw from Iraq.
“I think it’s fair to say that our footprint is going to be changing within the country,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Sept. 27.
Ryder’s most recent comments about U.S. troop levels in Iraq come in response to a reporter’s question at a Dec. 19 Pentagon news briefing, at which he explained that in addition to the roughly 900 U.S. troops in Syria on long-term deployments, another 1,100 American troops are in the country on deployments that can range from 30 to 90 days.
On Monday, Ryder described these extra 1,100 troops in Syria as “enablers in support of force protection, transportation, maintenance, or other emerging operational requirements.”
Ryder again cited operational security and diplomatic considerations along with the rotational nature of these additional forces as the reasons why the Pentagon had not publicly released the total number of U.S. troops in Syria until last week.
“The numbers of these additional temporary forces have fluctuated over the past several years based on mission needs but in general have increased over time as the threat has increased to baseline forces,” Ryder said in the statement.
Since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel, Iranian-backed groups have repeatedly attacked U.S. troops in the Middle East. Between Oct. 18, 2023 and Nov. 21, 2024, there were 79 attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, 125 in Syria, and two in Jordan.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has been fighting an undeclared war for more than a year against Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been attacking commercial and military ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas. On Sunday, the Navy cruiser USS Gettysburg accidentally shot down a Navy F/A-18 fighter amid operations against the Houthis. Both aviators aboard ejected safely.
This is not the first time that the Pentagon has admitted that more U.S. troops have been deployed in harm’s way than it had previously acknowledged. In August 2017, defense officials acknowledged that the true number of American service members in Afghanistan was between 11,000 and 12,000, not 8,400, as the Pentagon had claimed.
Around that time, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that he had to “level the bubble and account for everybody who’s on the ground there now” in Afghanistan.
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