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Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq, Jul. 14, 2026

July 14, 2026 · The White House · 0:31:05

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump hosted the Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq, Ali al-Zaidi, for a bilateral meeting at the White House on July 14, 2026. “It’s a great honor to have the Prime Minister of Iraq with us,” Trump said, praising al-Zaidi’s election win and saying of Iraq that “they have tremendous oil reserves” and that “we have tremendous oil partnerships all of a sudden being formed over the last short period of time” — partnerships he said would be announced within the following week or two and would be “massive, though, among the largest.”

Al-Zaidi, on what he said was his first visit to the United States, framed the trip as “an announcement of economic partnership,” saying: “On 23rd of September, the US forces will be out of Iraq. While the US companies will be inside Iraq.” He also described his government’s program to restrict weapons to the state, saying that after September 30 Iraq would not accept any entity carrying weapons outside state control. Asked whether the U.S. military was still needed in Iraq, Trump said, “We don’t think we need the military there anymore,” adding that Iran — “a big burden on Iraq” — had been “very much destabilized.” In a separate exchange, Trump explained a Strait of Hormuz fee idea he said he had put out the previous day: after calls from Gulf partners, he said, they had proposed instead to invest heavily in the United States, and “we’d love to do it a different way.”

Why it matters

The meeting is the dated anchor for the administration’s Iraq transition: a U.S. forces departure date stated by the Iraqi prime minister at the White House, an oil-partnership program the President said would be announced within days, and the Hormuz fee proposal’s on-record explanation — all filed here on the Foreign Policy & Defense hub as the two leaders stated them.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the September 23 U.S. forces departure date for Iraq as stated by Prime Minister al-Zaidi, and the President’s announcement that major U.S.–Iraq oil partnerships would be unveiled within one to two weeks. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; the entry itself stays review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq,” July 14, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the two leaders at the meeting.