Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014) in the context of "American-led intervention in Iraq (2014–present)"

Tikrit (Arabic: تِكْرِيت, romanized: Tikrīt [ˈtɪkriːt]) is a city in Iraq, located 140 kilometers (87 mi) northwest of Baghdad and 220 kilometers (140 mi) southeast of Mosul on the Tigris River. It is the administrative center of the Saladin Governorate. In 2012, it had a population of approximately 160,000. Tikrit is widely regarded as the cultural capital of Iraqi Sunni Arabs, with control of the city carrying symbolic weight due to its former prestige.

Originally created as a fort during the Assyrian empire, Tikrit became the birthplace of Muslim military leader Saladin. Saddam Hussein's birthplace was in a modest village (13 km) south of Tikrit, which is called "Al-Awja"; for that, Saddam bore the surname al-Tikriti. The inhabitants of this village were farmers. Many individuals from Saladin Governorate, especially from Tikrit, were government officials during the Ba'athist period until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Following the invasion, the city has been a site of insurgency by Sunni militants, including the Islamic State who captured the city in June 2014. During the Second Battle of Tikrit from March to April 2015, which resulted in the displacement of 28,000 civilians, Iraqi government forces regained control of the city, with the city at peace since then.

The War in Iraq (2013–2017) was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State. Following December 2013, the insurgency escalated into a full-scale war following clashes in parts of western Iraq, which culminated in the Islamic State offensive into Iraq in June 2014, leading to the capture of the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and other cities in western and northern Iraq by the Islamic State. Between 4–9 June 2014, the city of Mosul was attacked and later fell; following this, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for a national state of emergency on 10 June. However, despite the security crisis, Iraq's parliament did not allow Maliki to declare a state of emergency; many legislators boycotted the session because they opposed expanding the prime minister's powers. Ali Ghaidan, a former military commander in Mosul, accused al-Maliki of being the one who issued the order to withdraw from the city of Mosul. At its height, ISIL held 56,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory, containing 4.5 million citizens.

The war resulted in the forced resignation of al-Maliki in 2014, as well as an airstrike campaign by the United States and a dozen other countries in support of the Iraqi military, participation of American and Canadian troops (predominantly special forces) in ground combat operations, a $3.5 billion U.S.-led program to rearm the Iraqi security forces, a U.S.-led training program that provided training to nearly 200,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, the participation of the military of Iran, including troops as well as armored and air elements, and military and logistical aid provided to Iraq by Russia. On 9 December 2017, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced victory over the Islamic State. The Islamic State switched to guerrilla "hit and run" tactics in an effort to undermine the Iraqi government's effort to eradicate it. This conflict is interpreted by some in Iraq as a spillover of the Syrian civil war. Other Iraqis and observers see it mainly as a culmination of long-running local sectarianism, exacerbated by the 2003–2011 Iraq War, the subsequent increase in anti-Sunni sectarianism under Prime Minister al-Maliki, and the ensuing bloody crack-down on the 2012–2013 Iraqi protests.

The Second Battle of Tikrit was a battle in which Iraqi Security Forces recaptured the city of Tikrit (the provincial capital of the Saladin Governorate) from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Iraqi forces consisted of the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Forces (the bulk of the ground forces, consisting of Shia militiamen and also some Sunni tribesmen), receiving assistance from Iran's Quds Force officers on the ground, and air support from the American, British, and French air forces.

The city of Tikrit, located in the central part of the Saladin Governorate in north of Baghdad and Samarra and lying adjacent to the Tigris River, was lost to ISIL during the huge strides made by the group during its offensive in June 2014. After its capture, ISIL retaliated with the massacre at Camp Speicher, a nearby training facility for the Iraqi Air Force. After months of preparation and intelligence-gathering, Iraqi forces engaged in offensive operations to fully encircle and subsequently retake the city, starting on 2 March 2015. The offensive was the largest anti-ISIL operation to date, involving some 20,000–30,000 Iraqi forces (outnumbering ISIL fighters more than two-to-one), with an estimated 13,000 ISIL fighters present. It was reported that 90% of the residents of the city left out of fear both of ISIL and retaliatory attacks by Shia militias once the city is captured. As such, most of the residents fled to nearby cities, such as Baghdad and Samarra, or even further to Iraqi Kurdistan or Lebanon.

The Iraqi civil war was a short armed conflict from 2006 to 2008 between various sectarian Shia and Sunni armed groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Mahdi Army, in addition to the Iraqi government alongside American-led coalition forces. In February 2006, the insurgency against the coalition and government escalated into a sectarian civil war after the bombing of Al-Askari Shrine, considered a holy site in Twelver Shi'ism. US President George W. Bush and Iraqi officials accused Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) of orchestrating the bombing. AQI publicly denied any links. The incident set off a wave of attacks on Sunni civilians by Shia militants, followed by attacks on Shia civilians by Sunni militants.

The UN Secretary General stated in September 2006 that if patterns of discord and violence continued, the Iraqi state was in danger of breaking up. On 10 January 2007, Bush said that "80% of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles (48 km) of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shakes the confidence of all Iraqis." By late 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate described the conflict as having elements of a civil war. In 2008, during the Sunni Awakening and the U.S. troop surge, violence declined dramatically. However, an insurgency by ISI continued to plague Iraq following the U.S. withdrawal in late 2011. In June 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the successor to Islamic State of Iraq, launched a major military offensive against the Iraq government and declared a self-proclaimed worldwide Islamic caliphate. This led to another full-scale war from 2013 to 2017, in which the government declared victory.

Following the outbreak of the protests of Syrian revolution during the Arab Spring in 2011 and the escalation of the ensuing conflict into a full-scale civil war by mid-2012, the Syrian Civil War became a theatre of proxy warfare between various regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. Spillover of the Syrian civil war into the wider region began when the Iraqi insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) started intervening in the conflict in 2012.

In 2012, ISI began transporting its fighters, arms and supplies to Syria. In April 2013, ISI renamed itself as the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" (ISIL), officially announcing its expansion into Syria. Throughout 2013, ISIL fought Syrian opposition groups, gaining control of numerous hamlets, villages, towns and cities in eastern and northern Syria. In late 2013, ISIL launched its Anbar campaign into regions of Western Iraq and captured Fallujah in January 2014. In June 2014, ISIL captured vaste swathes of territory during its Northern Iraq offensive, culminating in the capture of Mosul. On 29 June 2014, the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" (IS) and declared itself as a Caliphate.