The parliamentary foreign affairs committee is taking action to compel the government to reduce the number of US embassy staff in Baghdad.
The parliamentary foreign affairs committee is taking action to compel the government to reduce the number of US embassy staff in Baghdad.
10-3-2026
Information/Baghdad…
Member of the Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, MP Mukhtar Al-Youssef, revealed on Saturday that his committee intends to present a binding legal proposal to the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during its meeting on Sunday, which calls for reducing the number of diplomatic and administrative staff at the US Embassy in Baghdad, stressing that the current numbers exceed diplomatic norms and constitute a security breach.
Al-Youssef told Al-Maalouma News Agency that “the committee will present an official proposal tomorrow, Sunday, aimed at obligating the government to take immediate action to reduce the size of the American mission,” explaining that “the current number of employees is very large and does not correspond at all to the size of representation that is commonly accepted between countries.”
He added that “most international intelligence agencies use embassies as an official cover for their activities through administrative and diplomatic fronts,” warning that “the huge numbers inside the US embassy in Baghdad have become a real security threat through their continued collection of security information and monitoring of the movements of political figures.”
Al-Youssef stressed “the need for the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deal in kind with Washington, and to determine the size and level of staff at the US Embassy in line with the number of employees at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in the United States.”
It is worth noting that the number of employees currently working at the US Embassy in Baghdad is a few hundred, with recent estimates indicating approximately 350 to 500 staff members. This is a significant decrease from the peak of the US presence in 2012, when the number exceeded 16,000 employees and contractors.
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