WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced on Monday that the United States is ending its combat mission in Iraq, though the American troops will remain in the country to train and advise local forces.

The announcement comes as the US president met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi in the Oval Office on Monday.

During the meeting, they agreed to end the US combat mission in Iraq by the end of 2021, more than 18 years after American troops were sent to the country.

“Our role in Iraq will be...to be available to continue to train, to assist to help and to deal with ISIS as it arises, but we are not going to be by the end of the year in a combat mission,” Biden said.

Biden said the US remains committed to “our security cooperation and our shared fight against ISIS is critical for the stability of the region and our counterterrorism cooperation will continue even as we shift to this new phase we are going to be talking about.”

The US currently has about 2,500 American troops in Iraq. At the White House briefing on Monday, press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide details on how many troops will stay in Iraq past the end of this year to provide training and advising help.

“We feel this is a natural and next step in these ongoing strategic dialogues and we are moving to a phase not where we are ending our partnership, we are maintaining a presence in Iraq with a different mission,” she said. “This is a shift in mission, it is not a removal of our partnership or our presence or our close engagement with Iraqi leaders.”

The mission change in Iraq comes as the United States is also nearly finished withdrawing from Afghanistan, despite fears among some experts that terrorism could thrive in the country without an American military presence.

A US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003 based on charges that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was ousted from power, but such weapons were never found.

In recent years the US mission was dominated by helping defeat Daesh (the so-called IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.