When the last U.S. forces left Erbil Air Base in Iraqi Kurdistan on Sept. 30, 2026, it marked more than the removal of soldiers and military equipment. It also changed the security calculus in the region.

For years, the American troop presence had two effects at once. It provided the region – home to 6.5 million people, mainly ethnically Kurdish – with broader military support and protection against drones and missiles launched by Iran and its allied groups in Iraq. The American presence also helped make the region part of a wider confrontation between the United States, Iran and those same Iranian-allied groups.

The withdrawal, therefore, creates a paradox. Iraqi Kurdistan may become less attractive as a target for militant groups seeking to pressure the United States. Yet the region loses some of the capabilities that helped manage threats that have little to do with the American presence.

The important question, then, for me as a regional expert is not simply whether Iraqi Kurdistan is safer after the U.S. departure, but which disappears faster: the threats that existed as a response to American forces or the protection their presence provided.

Removing a target, not all threats

Iraqi Kurdistan, officially called the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is a semi-autonomous federal region of the country and shares borders with Iran, Turkey and Syria.

After decades of repression under Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were able to maintain self-rule with the support of the U.S. after the 1991 Gulf War. The relationship later grew into a close security partnership, especially in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Yet the Kurds’ security position in the country has remained somewhat tenuous. The region’s hosting of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups has long drawn the ire of Iran. Iraqi militia groups linked to Iran, moreover, have regularly attacked Kurdish political, security and economic targets as part of Iraq’s internal power struggles.

Those tensions increased after the 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum, in which nearly 92.73% of Kurds supported independence after years of........

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