Part of: January 6 & the Trump Relationship
'Another Iraq': Mace walks out of a classified Iran briefing and tells Trump to take Lindsey Graham 'out of the Situation Room'
On March 25, 2026, Rep. Nancy Mace walked out of a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing on the Iran war and posted that she 'will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing,' warning that 'the Washington War Machine' wanted to turn Iran into 'another Iraq.' The same week she demanded that President Trump remove Sen. Lindsey Graham 'from the Situation Room,' first on X and then on CNN. The posture put her against the Iran-hawk wing of her own party even as she continued to praise Trump.
On March 25, 2026, with the United States and Israel several weeks into the second Iran conflict, Rep. Nancy Mace walked out of a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing on Iran and announced it in real time on X. Within days she had moved from one of Trump's most reliable backers to one of the loudest Republican voices warning against escalation, while still crediting Trump for the operation itself.
Reporting credit: The walkout and the posts around it were reported by Mediaite, "'Another Iraq': Nancy Mace Walks Out of Iran Briefing, Warns 'They' Want Boots on the Ground" (March 25, 2026), and corroborated by Yahoo News and ZeroHedge.
Mace posted that she had left the briefing and would not back a ground war:
Just walked out of a House Armed Services briefing on Iran. Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing.
Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) March 25, 2026
In a companion post she invoked Iraq directly while pointedly keeping her praise for Trump intact, the straddle that defined her Iran posture:
I will not support sending South Carolina's sons and daughters to war in Iran. I won't do it. President Trump has been enormously successful so far. But we cannot allow the Washington War Machine to turn Iran into another Iraq.
Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) March 25, 2026
She also wrote, in a post widely quoted with its original wording intact, "Washington's war machine is hard at work," and "They are try to drag us into Iran to make it another Iraq. We can't let them." (The missing "-ing" in "try" is how the post was published.)
Mace's "another Iraq" line, from her March 25, 2026 posts after the briefing walkout.
"Take Lindsey Graham out of the Situation Room"
Days earlier, on the night of Sunday, March 22, 2026, Mace turned her fire on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the most prominent Republican hawk on Iran, who had publicly urged the administration to seize Iran's Kharg Island oil terminal:
Lindsey Graham needs to be removed from the Situation Room. I don't want to hear one word from a guy with no kids, desperately sending our sons and daughters into war on the ground in Iran.
Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) March 22, 2026
She kept up the attack across the same cluster of posts, writing that "Lindsey Graham has one foreign policy: send someone else's kids to war. He was wrong about Iraq. He was wrong about Afghanistan. Now he's wrong about Iran," and that "Unless he's suiting up for Kharg Island himself, he should sit down."
On Wednesday, March 25, Mace took the same message to CNN's Laura Coates Live, where, after a clip of Graham calling to seize Kharg Island, she said she wanted the president himself to sideline him:
"I want President Trump to take Lindsey Graham out of the Situation Room.", Nancy Mace, CNN's Laura Coates Live, March 25, 2026
In the same appearance, responding to the administration's briefing, she said, "I'm unwilling to lose marines on the sands of Kharg Island."
Mace on CNN's Laura Coates Live, March 25, 2026.
Watch: Mace on the ground-troops red line
CNN's video pages are not embeddable on third-party sites, so the canonical CNN clip is linked in the sources below. The closest verified, embeddable recording is Mace's own CBS News Face the Nation interview, in which she restates the no-ground-troops position:
Video: CBS News "Face the Nation," March 27, 2026 (the network's official upload). It is a related, on-record interview restating the ground-troops red line, not the CNN Laura Coates Live segment quoted above, which CNN does not make embeddable.
Context
Mace made these statements while running in the Republican primary for South Carolina governor, a campaign in which she styled herself "Trump in high heels" and openly sought his endorsement. Trump instead endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette on May 29, 2026, and Mace finished fifth in the June 9 primary (see On CNN's board, anchors can't find Mace). Her Iran break, alongside her vote to release the Epstein files, ran through that same stretch. The next day she went further and signaled she would vote with House Democrats to wind the war down (see 'President Trump has won the war, time to exit').
Sources & related coverage:
- Mediaite, "'Another Iraq': Nancy Mace Walks Out of Iran Briefing, Warns 'They' Want Boots on the Ground" (the originating report)
- CNN, "GOP Rep. Nancy Mace: 'I want President Trump to take Lindsey Graham out of the Situation Room'" (video; not embeddable off-site)
- CNN, "GOP lawmakers vent frustration over Trump administration's lack of info on Iran war"
- Newsweek, "Lindsey Graham faces GOP fury: 'needs to be removed from the Situation Room'"
- Yahoo News / WCBD, "Mace says Graham 'needs to be removed from the Situation Room'"
- ZeroHedge, "Republican Lawmakers Led By Nancy Mace Begin To Break With Trump On Iran War"
- CBS News, "Nancy Mace says she's 'unwilling to put South Carolina sons and daughters on the ground' in Iran" (Face the Nation, video)
- Mace's posts: @RepNancyMace, walkout · @RepNancyMace, "another Iraq" · @RepNancyMace, "Situation Room"
- See also: Lindsey Graham and the 2026 Governor Campaign.
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