It's Wednesday, January 14, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Americans have found ourselves talking about two countries that haven't been a part of our daily conversation. One of them, even more rare than the other. We're talking about Iran and Greenland. But let's start with Iran. The reason Iran is front and center in considerations is because right now it might be the most interesting place on planet Earth. And that's because demonstrations, particularly of young people, but large demonstrations have broken out in major Iranian cities, unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic in terms of the period from 1979 to the present. So we're talking about a theocratic, we're autocratic regime. It is Islamic extremism. It is a theocratic state driven by not only Islam, but in particular the Shiite variant of Islam. There is enormous distress going on in Iran right now. And Iran, as you know, has been in the headlines of so much mayhem around the world since 1979 and what was then known as the Islamic Revolution. So let's look at history. First of all, why is Iran so important? The quick answer is because Iran, better known throughout most of the history of that region as Persia, going back to ancient Mesopotamia, has been central to world history virtually from the beginning of recorded history. You're talking about one of the most long standing civilizational traditions on planet Earth and by some accounts, the longest, of course, there would be a biblical argument to be made against that. But nonetheless, just in terms of the flow of human history as it has been recorded, the Persians are one of the most ancient and one of the most powerful traditions and empires. But of course, it wasn't originally known as Persia. And you could look, for example, I just preached last Sunday from the opening chapter of the book of Nehemiah. And the King Arduxerxes there is the King of Susa. Well, Susa is very much one of the most important political capitals of ancient Persia. You're also looking at the fact that there are other empires in the region that have often engaged with what would eventually become known as Persia, now modern Iran. But you would have the rise of dominant political figures such as Cyrus the Great. You would look at other figures and there is deep engagement with the Old Testament here, as I said with Nehemiah one. Nehemiah was cup bearer to the King of Susa. So we're talking right in this area, Susa very much a part of what would eventually be described as the Persian Empire. You're also talking about the rise and fall of other empires, the Assyrian Empire, others. It all comes down to the fact that when you are looking at Iran right now, you are looking at one of the longest civilizational claims in all of human history, period. And you're also looking at the fact that it has been contested territory in terms of the rising and falling of nations and empires longer than most recorded human history. It's not just the Babylonian, the Persian and the Assyrian empires in the BC era. It is also, even as you look back to history before Christ, it also involves the clash between the Roman Empire and the Persians. And this meant the Roman Empire, first of all in Rome and secondly, the Byzantine Empire, which was of course looking to Constantinople as its capital. You're looking at the fact that Persia was an empire of earth-shaking power and competitive threat even to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. You just take one major world historical figure like Alexander the Great and it was Alexander, originally from Macedon, who had the great ambition to establish an empire greater than had ever existed in human history and the conquering of Persia was very much a part of that ambition as a matter of fact, a central part. It was in some ways the final part of Alexander's own story. But you fast forward through history and you eventually get to the rise and fall of different dynasties and governments at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. Just fast forward into the 20th century to get to the contemporary problem. You have in this period the rise of what will become known as the Pallavi dynasty and this involved the first Shah and then his son, the second Shah and it would be the second Shah who would be deposed in 1979 in the Islamic Revolution, which would bring the Ayatollah Khomeini to power and the modern Islamic theocracy, the modern Islamic Republic of Iran. But if we go back into the 20th century, let's go back and look at the period, say between the two world wars. One of the big issues here is that the Pallavi dynasty was very important. Iran was very important for a couple of reasons. Number one, geopolitical. Just look at Iran on the map. One of the things you see is that Iran, when it was really represented by the reach of Persian imperial culture and all the rest, it included many of the so-called stands like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, you could just go down the stands. And between Iran and Russia, that's basically what you've got. So if you are Russia or the Soviet Union, you've got to look at Iran as a potential, well destabilizing factor, potential trouble. Meanwhile, the British and the Americans understood Iran to be central for two reasons. Number one, that the geopolitics where it is located, Iran as an ally would be a powerful check on the Soviet Union and its ambitions. The second thing is Iran has been rich with oil. So in the 20th century, you're looking at the century of oil, and thus Iran had liquid gold under those sands, and it had a geostrategic importance. The Pahlavi dynasty was very important to the United States, so much so that the CIA interfered at one point in the political process there. The Iranian situation was very much tied to the Cold War, to American and British and allied interests there. The Pahlavi dynasty was very well connected to the United States. Its oil money bought American armaments and American aircraft. That's one of the reasons why Iran's air force and its airline, the national airline, has been flying for decades, such decrepit old jetliners. It's because the Islamic Republic meant that the United States and allies basically haven't been selling that stuff to Iran for decades, and they flew them for as long as they possibly could, but no one would recommend today getting on an Iranian airliner for any number of reasons. But you'll recall that the Islamic Revolution that came in the late 1970s, by the time you get to 1979, the Pahlavi dynasty is basically spent. Its infamous secret police had been hated by the people for a very, very long time. The Shah was seen as a symbol of decadence and of repression, and the Iranian people were clamoring to be rid of the Pahlavi dynasty, and they were rid of it, and then they invited in the Ayatollah Khomeini, who of course turned out to be an absolute Islamic, Shiaite, theocratic terror. Whether or not most Iranians had any clue, and that includes the students who are so active in the demonstrations and the uprising and the attempted political overthrow, eventually the successful political overthrow of the Shah and his dynasty. I mean, the fact is that what they got was even greater repression, but repression in this case, in the name of Islam, and not only Islam, but the Shia version of Islam. You had the rule by Ayatollah. In the view of Khomeini himself, he had talked about what he termed the guardianship of the jurists, and this comes back to the fact that Islam is about law, Islamic law from the Quran, and the Shiaite interpretation of that law, and the imposition of that law by means of the Ayatollah, and the fellow teachers, the guardianship of the jurists. And of course, Iran became very involved in mayhem not only in the country and in the region, but in the world. It became a major engine for Islamic terrorism. And of course, Americans remember that with the revolution, the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 came further complications for the United States. You had the grabbing, the confiscation of a lot of American oil and other economic assets. You had the capturing of the Shah's air force and army. You also had something that was very threatening. And that was you had this very radical regime come into power and basically set students loose. The guardianship of the jurists actually early turned into the anarchy of the students and students took control of the American embassy in Tehran. And of course, that led to the hostage situation. It also led under President Jimmy Carter to an abortive effort that ended in disaster to rescue those hostages. This became a major part of the 1980 American political scene. And it was shortly after the election of President Ronald Reagan that the Islamic authorities let the hostages go. It was intended as an insult to the man who was then former president Jimmy Carter. But it also represented the fact that Ronald Reagan was bringing an entirely new aggressive posture against Iran. All of this came with all kinds of consequence. The national relationships between the United States and Iran have been among the worst in world history for a matter of decades. And Iran has basically befriended or sought to befriend every enemy of the United States. And the United States has done everything within its power with allies to isolate and indeed even to starve the Iranian theocratic regime. And you also have other things going on here. For one thing, you have the struggle between the Sunni majority of Islam and the Shiite minority. A lot of Americans get this mixed up, particularly since Iran was Shiite. A lot of Americans came to the conclusion that if you compare Shiite Islam with Sunni Islam, then it is the Shia who are the more violent. Actually, that's not always the case. What is the case, however, is that the distinction between Sunni Islam, the majority so much so that it is the majority in 40 different countries, it is nonetheless true that the Shia represent a powerful force. As I said, the Sunni Muslim majority, that's a Muslim in 40 different countries. That's pretty amazing in and of itself. But the Shia represent a majority in Iran, in Iraq, in Azerbaijan, and in Bahrain. Also, a plurality it is claimed of Muslims in Lebanon. That makes some sense just given the region. What's the difference? Well, the difference is that in the Sunni Muslim majority, you have a continuation of the teachings and the traditions of Muhammad, but you have it in a way that isn't tied as closely to the family, the lineage of the Prophet Muhammad, as is the case in Shia Islam. When Muhammad died, he was followed by four successors. They were known as caliphs. That's why you talk about certain forms of Muslim rule as a caliphate. They were caliphs, and all four are recognized by the Sunni majority. Just to simplify matters as much as we can, the Shia actually follow one of those caliphs, who was both the cousin and the nephew of Muhammad. You have that one caliph, and then you have imams who followed. There's a version of Shia, which are known as the 12ers, who follow an apocalyptic vision from the 12th of the imams, who they believe will come again. It's very interesting. It's defined by Sunni as a cultic, but nonetheless, you are looking at the fact that the Shia version of Islam is based in this authoritative teaching and in an authoritative teacher. When you talk about Sunni Islam, there are various centers of influence, but when it comes to the Shia, the Aytolik Khomeini, he was the leading figure, and of course, he had a very clear intention. The Aytolik Khomeini was already quite aged by the time of the Islamic Revolution and his coming to power. He died in 1989, and he was followed by Aytolik Ali Khamenei, and he became the next supreme leader. He is still basically the supreme leader there in Iran, and he's still a major figure at the center of the controversy and the demonstrations. What's happened, basically, we understand this, is that Iran's current leadership is losing credibility. It's losing credibility for numerous reasons. Number one, when you look at this kind of Shia regime, it lasts only so long as it lasts. It has binding authority, and in a secular age, it's hard to imagine that that binding authority could continue without the use of force. And of course, that's why the Islamic Republic there, it has been very eager to use force. The pattern of coercion and compliance is exactly what the supreme leader has demanded and called for. He's been using secret police. He uses the army. He uses whatever effort of repression. Capital punishment has been routine, and the crushing of the enemies of the Islamic Republic in the name of the supreme leader. All this has been very much a part of Iran's tradition, and especially its experience since the Islamic Revolution. And eventually, it's just a matter of fact that you wear down your own population in this. And furthermore, you now have students. Remember, students were crucial to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Well, they're now grandparents. The students now, they are not driven by the same ambitions. They're not driven by the same convictions. And frankly, they've been seeing Iran get further and further behind. And one of the factors that brought an end to the Soviet Union was the fact that you had younger citizens there in the Soviet Union who wanted to wear blue jeans and listen to rock music. In other words, they wanted to be a part of an international youth culture. And what they saw as the future, that's playing a part in Iran right now as well. And the harder the crackdown and the repression, I think it's easy to argue that the repression in Iran has gone beyond anything in the last decades of the Soviet Union. It clearly is reaching a tinderbox situation. You also have a couple of other things. Number one, you have inflation. And inflation is now so much a part of the economic failure of Iran that it's virtually not even important to cite mathematical figures. The inflation means that the economy is in a freefall. And eventually, when you have people who can't afford to live, they can't put gas in their their automobile in a land, of course, that has been one of the great oil reserves in the world. If they can't buy groceries for their family, if they just, if they can't make it, that leads to rampant unrest. And when it comes to economic inflation, that is one of the most inflammable kinds of political realities for any regime. And then guess what Iran's short of right now? It's so short of water that its political authorities are talking about having to move the capital Tehran to a place which might have plausibly more usable water, a water crisis in the middle of this kind of landscape is something that's understandable, but it is undermining the plausibility of the regime. If you can't feed your people and you can't, if you can't give your people water, well, what would be the other thing? If you can't protect your people. It is arguable that the Islamic Republic has basically been kept under the control of these theocrats for years because Iranians thought, yeah, they're oppressive at home, but they do provide security. As a matter of fact, security has been a part of an untold number of government agencies. But just remember over the course of the last 24 months, Iran has been attacked by Israel. Iran symbolically sent back a response, but that response demonstrated the fact that Iran is nowhere near Israel's a military power. And then it's not just Israel. American bombs ordered into action by President Trump landed in Iran. And of course, one of the factors here is the fact that Iran's theocrats have been pressing towards the development of a usable nuclear weapon. That's something the United States is not going to allow to happen. Our allies are not going to allow that to happen. I guarantee you Israel is not going to let that happen. And furthermore, remember the geopolitical reality, the fairly close proximity of Iran and Russia. Russia's Vladimir Putin doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon either. But the very fact that Israel and the United States could launch such successful attacks against Iran, well, that has robbed the regime of the possibility that it could provide security. If it can't feed its citizens, if it can't treat them decently, if it can't even provide them water, nor does it provide them security. Well, I think you can understand something of the unrest. The big surprise here, by the way, and this always catches outside observers by surprise. This kind of demonstration or spread of these demonstrations has been so remarkable. Clearly, the Iranian authorities don't know what to do. And clearly, outside authorities don't know exactly what to do either. President Trump has openly mentioned American intervention, but it's not clear what that would mean. There is open speculation about what could come after this theocratic regime. But the fact is that history has proven is a very difficult prophecy to make with any accuracy. You know, this gets to one of the other just simple observations about the course of history. There are people who are saying, well, you know, this could lead to something worse. And that's often a plausible argument. But in this case, it's hard to imagine anything worse than the theocracy of the Islamic Republic there in Iran. I guess it could be worse, but heaven help us from ever finding out what that would even mean. All right, we'll be following events as they unfold in Iran, lots of complications. The United States at this point doesn't appear nor with allies, do we appear, to be in the position to say what kind of future that we would hope for in Iran. But it is the people of Iran who are going to have to eventually make that determination. It's the people of Iran who are paying the price right now. It is believed that the regime has killed either hundreds or thousands of its own citizens involved in these demonstrations. But you know, the way this happens, you just look at the fall of the Soviet Union, you look at so many other events. The way this happens is it will either be an ultimate test to the regime and the theocrats once again will win kind of like the Chinese communists prevailed after the the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square decades ago. But it is also clear that this kind of demonstration can lead to the fall, to the toppling of a regime. That's exactly what we saw, for example, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of so many of the nations of Eastern Europe that had been a part of the Soviet bloc. So it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. But at least, you know, some of the issues, think of the vast worldview conflict here. We talked about a conflict even between Sunni and Shia versions of Islam, the conflict between Islam and Christianity, the nations produced by the Christian heritage that you see the direct conflict here. There is nothing like modern Western conceptions of liberty and human dignity and citizenship. There's nothing like that within the teachings of the Islamic Republic. So all these things are going to have to be developed if they are to come as innovations there in Iran. So it's going to be very interesting. We will be watching with you. I did mention Greenland. And of course, that's been very much in the headlines because President Trump in his first administration, in his first term, but particularly in his second term is talking about the fact that Greenland must become part of the United States of America. And I think a lot of Americans are absolutely puzzled by that. But I want to give a short explanation for why it's so important. And it is because once again, in geo strategic perspective, Greenland is a massive issue of importance for the United States of America and even for the defense of the American heartland. And that's because Greenland, that that massive island nation, about 80% of it, by the way, covered with ice, Greenland is, well, it's very close to Europe. It's also at the Arctic, where you have a narrowing of all of these distances in such a way that, for example, during the Cold War, it was really clear that Greenland was absolutely essential to the United States, just in terms of our own nuclear security, any missile fired by the Soviet Union would likely have to pass, at least from the western Soviet Union, would have to pass over Greenland. And thus it was very much a part of the American defense structure. And furthermore, the United States going all the way back to World War Two has been granted rights for a military base. There's a big, well, at least has been a big Air Force base there. The issue is that Greenland is important mostly for the geo strategic dimension. It's also very important, even essential to the United States, says President Trump, for the mineral deposits and other assets there. In all likelihood, that is a lesser concern than the geo strategic concern. But what do you have when you're looking at Greenland right now? What's the politics? Well, it is officially a part of the larger domain of Denmark. It was, we'll call them Scandinavian explorers who reached this island, and they didn't know exactly what it was. The fact that it is so close there in the northern area to Europe, and particularly to Scandinavia is predictable that Scandinavian originally Norse mariners would eventually reach the area. And they established some settlements, by the way, some of them named the place Greenland basically because it was advertising, as it turns out, false advertising. They wanted to make the name attractive so that others among the Norse would go to help to settle the land. Of course, so once they got there, they discovered that the name Greenland was a profound lie. But nonetheless, Greenland was very important. And of course, they were also Inuit people that is often described as indigenous peoples. And of course, they were indigenous in sense of always being there. But nonetheless, they've been there for a very, very long time. And so you look at Greenland and you understand that Scandinavia had a primary interest. So you had nations like Sweden, Norway very much involved there in making claims in Greenland. We just had to fast forward in history. Eventually, it would come under the domain of Denmark, and it remains so now. But Denmark is neither directly governing Greenland nor is Denmark able, in terms of its own military, to defend Greenland against some kind of aggression coming from, let's just say, conceivably Russia or China. When President Trump makes the statement that the United States must have Greenland, what he basically wants to do is to bring Greenland under American authority, if not direct American sovereignty in such a way that America can defend Greenland and deploy Greenland in the way the American government would see to be in its own interest. And frankly, in the interest of the United States and our allies and as a necessary strategic asset. If you go back in history, just a matter of several decades, the United States made an offer to buy Greenland, to buy Greenland for $100 million. There are proposals, at least having been leaked thus far, in which the United States might offer all of the inhabitants or the citizens of Greenland, something like $50,000 to $100,000 in order to secure sovereignty over the area. All of this is very convoluted, but the bottom line in worldview analysis is that geo-strategic importance is often the greatest importance in a nation's mind. And the nation right now is the United States of America, and it is simply true that when President Trump says that Denmark is in no position to defend Greenland, that is basically true. Now, that also means that the United States is in the position where it's going to have to be extremely persuasive here. And it's also clear, at least in the American mind, I would not dare to read the mind or the intention of President Trump. But the reality is that the American government has come to the conclusion that it must have access to Denmark period. It must have basic control of Denmark period, and it must keep Russians and Chinese and others outside of Greenland period. What follows that period is, well, to put it bluntly, an open question. Any American attack upon Greenland would be, well, let's just say a final explosive when it comes to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It would be very, very complicated, but there's no way to predict exactly how this is going to fall out. It is just important to say, once again, geo-strategic importance is a very crucial issue. Also crucial, of course, of the interest of the Greenlanders and the issues of how exactly something like this can and should be handled. But you'll notice something very, very interesting. And just in worldview terms, take note of this. The President has made some very strong statements about the necessity of America, let's say, either possessing or controlling or having sovereignty over Greenland. And you'll notice that many people, including some in his own party, have criticized the way President Trump has said these things. But you'll notice something very interesting. When it comes to leading Democrats, the opposing party, they are not saying that the geo-strategic importance of Greenland is not an essential issue for the survival of the United States of America. Notice what they're saying, but it's also important to notice what they're not saying. Sometimes that's even louder and more important. All right, we'll get to other domestic issues, including the big issues before the Supreme Court this week on tomorrow's edition of the briefing. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmoller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.com forward slash albertmoller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Voice College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Orlando, Florida, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.
