The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, June 22, 2026

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the potential end of Keir Starmer’s tenure as Prime Minister, the U.S. deal with Iran, Russia’s attack on thousand year old cathedral in Kyiv, and the dedication of the Obama Presidential Center.Part I (00:14 – 05:13)Keir Starmer’s Tenure Heading to Its End: UK Prime Minister Appears Poised to Resign – What’s Behind It, and Who Will Take Over?Part II (05:13 – 16:13)The U.S. Deal with Iran: This is Short of President Trump’s Stated AimsTrump Put His Own Interests Above All in the Iran Deal by The New York Times (Thomas L. Friedman)Trump Was Right. The War Ended With a Surrender. by The New York Times (Nicholas Krisof)Part III (16:13 – 22:25)Russia is Attacking Cathedrals Now: Russia Sends Signal to Ukraine, and It Is Immensely Theological, Political, and HistoricalWith Its Attack on Kyiv’s Cathedral, Russia Reaches a New Low by The Wall Street Journal (Konstantin Akinsha)Part IV (22:25 – 29:19)The Celebration of a Massive, Brutalist Monument: The Dedication of the Obama Presidential CenterObama’s new center seeks to rekindle the hope of his presidency by The Washington Post (Karen Tumulty)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Monday, June 22nd, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, when you talk about elections in the United States, you talk about presidential elections every four years. You're talking about a predictable cycle, and you're not talking about a situation in which the United States government can stand or fall in terms of a presidential administration in any normal sense. And so that's in contrast to what is true in Great Britain. In Great Britain, you really can't talk about a government collapsing or a government failing. And that's because when you have a parliamentary system, the majority party can decide it wants a new leader. Basically, you have a new leader.

And that means that the government of Prime Minister Kierstarmor in the United Kingdom is really collapsing. And as a matter of fact, it may be that he announces his resignation even today. And the reality is that the alternative is that he would face a head-off between himself and Andy Burnham, who is the former mayor of Greater Manchester, long. time figure in the Labor Party, not a particularly well-defined figure politically, but he is known to be someone of rather enormous political gifts and personal magnetism. And those are basically two things that the Labor Party has decided. The current Prime Minister lacks. Not just one of them, but both of them. It was just a matter of a few days ago that Andy Burnham won this special election for this parliamentary seat in the House of Commons. And returning to the House of Commons, he now has standing to challenge Kirstarmour. It's an amazing system in which. you could have someone who doesn't even hold office in the national government, who in a matter of just a few hours, it seems, but certainly just a few days, can all of a sudden be elected to this parliamentary seat when it was open. He can come with a political mandate. He can then challenge the

established prime minister, the leader of the Labor Party, and he can find himself Britain's prime minister in a fairly short amount of time. And we're talking about just this week, as I say. The news, especially the news coming from authoritative sources in England, and that includes the financial times. That's about as establishment as you can get in UK politics, predicting that indeed, one way or another, Kier Starmar, is likely to indicate he's going to give way in a leadership contest to Andy Burnham. Now, there are all kinds of other things that are going on here. When you do talk about the British government falling, you know, people in the United States hearing those words would tend to think of government just ceasing to operate. But that's not the way it works in a

parliamentary system. Now, let me just make another point. And that is that if you are a proponent of a parliamentary system, that such as what you find in Britain, and to varying degrees what you find throughout much of the advanced world, having some form of participatory democracy, some form of constitutional self-government. It may well be that parliamentary systems, at least outnumber just in the number of governments, the kind of separation of powers you find in the United States. But when you're looking at a parliamentary system, the efficiency argument is the government can't lose. In other words, if the government is made up of a parliamentary majority, then by definition,

the leader of the party should be able to deliver a parliamentary majority on any issue. That's exactly why when you had, say, a conservative election that brought someone like Margaret Thatcher to the office of prime minister, she could basically bring about a transformation of British government. Now, not coming from the right, but coming from the left, that's exactly what the Labor Party wanted from Kirstarmer. and in terms of his background, he's plenty radical. The issue is, however, personality.

It turns out that in electoral politics and in political life, personality has a lot to do with whether or not a politician is successful. Because in a political system, an electoral democracy, a constitutional self-government, virtually any form, whoever is going to carry the executive role is going to have to have certain personal skills and a certain, say, outsized personality to be able to pull this off. And it may be that that's even more so in the American election process, and then it's even more so,

you might say, in the leadership process of the prime minister in a nation such as Britain. Now, let's just remind ourselves before we leave this for today, and we'll figure out what happens when the announcements come, if as expected they'll come even today. Remember that a lot of this has to do with the fact that when you have a parliamentary system and there's a challenge to the current government, and in this case it was just a threatened to challenge, but nonetheless, the threat was very real. When you have that situation, some members of the government

begin to resign. And in resigning from the government, they weakened the position of the prime minister. That's exactly what happened. The defense secretary basically resigned in protest of the prime minister's leadership. You had other figures who were threatening to resign. Others will hold on just in the hope

that they might be able to continue in their office because this isn't a change of party. This is not the result of an election, a national election, entire parliament. No, this has to do with the majority party determining who will be its leader. And that virtually answers the question of who will be prime minister. So we'll be watching that to see what happens, but very interesting things, as I say, right across the pond. All right. Now, looking at the international situation, which is often

where we need to go on Mondays, it's because so many things happen over the weekend, especially when you're talking about hotspot such as Iran and Ukraine. So let's just remind ourselves of what's at stake in these two fronts. And let's just look at where we are as of the last several days. Coming out of the weekend, coming into this week. First of all, let's look at the Iran-U.S. ceasefire agreement of some sort. And we now know the basic points that are included in this agreement, which is going to last for about a 60-day period, hopefully to get to a position in which, say, the nuclear material, the radioactive material, enriched uranium. It can all be negotiated. That's at least what the president's saying. The big.

political reality here is the fact that there's very widespread opposition and disappointment reflected in this agreement. And it really is becoming bipartisan. And that's when it starts to get really interesting. When you have members of the president's own party say, we don't like this. And as a matter of fact, some of the headlines that have come out just about the situation in Ukraine, they tell a pretty big story. The headlines sometimes are more important than the news story because the headlines are what is supposed to get your attention and is supposed to communicate the reality. Headline from the New York Times,

Trump lashes out at critics of deal as details emerge. And again, that's including people in his own party. There are other big headlines that have come along. Thomas Friedman with the Iran deal, Trump tries to save himself. Now, that's another interesting aspect of all of this. The president does clearly seem to be operating out of a political playbook in which he says the cost of continuing the military action in Iran.

and the blockade and having Iran continue the obstruction in the strait of homoes. The claim here is that it's not politically or economically tenable. And so it is really interesting because when you have someone like President Donald Trump, unprecedented in American politics, the fact is that he talks a lot. As a matter of fact, that is his political strategy to talk a lot. Also very interesting coverage about the communication strategy of the Trump administration, which is to make him more accessible than almost any president anytime in terms of modern presidential history. But going back to the president, he often does say exactly what's on his mind.

And so it's very interesting that in at least one interview, President Trump said, one of the reasons why we have to do this and we have to do this now that is the ceasefire is because we were looking at the threat of a real worldwide economic problem. And in fact, he spoke in stronger terms, something like a disaster. And the reality is, that could be true. And as a matter of fact, he's got advisors around him not only in terms of American advisors. He also has foreign leaders speaking into the situation. And the president has spoken of other frustrations, not only with Iran, but also with many who have been considered American allies.

So it is really interesting. You have a lot of criticism coming from within the Republican Party. You have a headline such as this. In Sunday's edition of the Times, Tehran defied the West and won. Nicholas Christoph, the war ended with a Republican Party. a surrender trumps. Now, I think that's an exaggeration. But I do think it's fair to say that the president has agreed to something that at least at this point is considerably short of what he is called for. Now, here's another aspect of all of this. Christians have to keep in mind.

We know what we know. As a matter of fact, that's also true of many people in the media. They know what they know, and that's all they know. And so what we really don't have, we're not privy, as the British would say. We're just not privy. We're not given access to what the president knew when he decided to take this action. What we don't know is what he knew. We don't know what he was told. We don't know what American military and intelligence agencies were saying. We do know this.

It's interesting that even some of the people who criticized the action against Ukraine when it happened, they've come back and said, well, you know, there was credible evidence of the fact that Iran was really building up much of its defense capacity. It's a very good thing that its Air Force and Navy have basically been, well, president's word was obliterated. But the fact is that doesn't remove the threat of Iran. And it's because here's where Christians understand. The threat of Iran is not primarily technological. It's moral. The threat of Iran is the threat of human violence. It's of a malevolent state. It's of basically a rogue terrorist nation. And there's no reason to believe at this point that Iran intends to be anything other than that. The other great complication that has come

in terms of the situation in Iran, even as Vice President Vance, who really has been given the assignment by President Trump, and he is now in Europe to have some of the formal talks that must be invoked here. A couple of things have happened. Number one, there clearly is a divide between the United States and Israel. Now, when this thing began, it was a joint American-Israeli military action. And even at the time, there were those in Israel who were saying that Israel had already made the determination it was going to take military action against Iran. Its achievement was in convincing the United States. and that means President Trump to join with the Israelis in this effort.

So that is exactly, if you'll recall, and you can document this, that was what was said when the military action suddenly began. And, of course, you had concerted effort. You had the Israelis and the Americans. Sometimes that involved joint military exercises with the military of both nations. You also had widespread intelligence sharing, and so there was just a great deal of coordination between the U.S. and Israel in terms of these attacks. but it's also clear that only one of the two nations, Israel and the United States, is located so close to Iran.

That's not the U.S. It is Israel. It is also true that Iran has pledged itself to the non-existence, to the annihilation of both the United States and Israel, but in proximate terms, Israel is the close target. And furthermore, it is the greater irritant to Iran. Israel also has shown the determination to shut down Iran, not only in terms of the Iranian military per se, but also the proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and others. That gets to the issue that Israel is making very clear right now. It is not happy with the U.S. ceasefire agreement, the memorandum of understanding. It's not happy with the situation, and Israel's not happy precisely because Iran continues to operate through Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and Israel says that it is determined to bring that to an end. Okay, another big political check.

of, say, 15 years ago, an Israeli government would have to worry about internal opposition to that kind of military incursion in Lebanon. Here's the thing. That kind of opposition seems to basically have disappeared, or at least to be nullified, which is to say that if you're observing a split, say, between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, yeah, that's probably there. But you know what you need to see even more as a significant issue? That's a split between the Israeli people and the American people on this issue. For the American people, let's be honest, this is a military action undertaken by the United States a long way away. For the Israeli people, it is a very close threat. It is a clear and present danger all the time. And it's about a proxy of Iran, Hezbollah,

which has murderous intentions in Israel again all the time, 24-7, 52 weeks a year. And so we're talking about a disproportionate situation between Israel and the United States. When it comes to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and all the rest, Israel is facing a clear and present danger. The United States, at least in terms of the perception of the American people, is that Iran is a sometimes big challenge. Israel sees it as a constant, never goes away. Big challenge. All right, before leaving this in terms of the Iran situation, in the United States, there's another big political dynamic at play. Let's talk about several of these levels of dynamic. Number one, what exactly is the president doing?

Is he just deciding we're just going to stop this? That is one reading. Actually, that's one very plausible reading. The president has decided we made the certain progress in terms of his mind, destroying the Air Force and the Navy, for example, setting back much of their technology and their economy. The president seems to think that's a very significant gain. But there's something else going on here,

and that is that there are some people who, no doubt are in the opposition to President Trump, in the opposing party, in the Democratic Party, we're still kind of glad this happened, but they're not about to say so. There are some amazing comments having to do with the president just deciding, apparently, to stop. And one of the most interesting statements was made by Jim Carvel, James Carville, long-time advisor to President Bill Clinton, longtime liberal, a Democratic Party advisor and very much a commentator in terms of, say, the cable news. He made a very interesting statement. And he, he, he, He basically defended President Trump saying, we're just going to end this by saying that if Lyndon Johnson had done that at a similar point in terms of America's effort in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam, that entire national crisis may have been avoided.

That's a very interesting point. There were many people who demanded that President Kennedy, but later, most especially, that President Johnson just say, we're going to stop this. There's no way we're going to bring about all the goals that we would intend without massive. massive American military action. And then by the time the Vietnam situation unfolded what the American administrations had done, American presidents had done, and I'll say Lyndon Johnson at the center of this, they had escalated the military conflict. They'd sent tens of thousands of American soldiers overseas, but they never follow that up with any kind of major sustained military effort to achieve the goals. And a part of it is because it turned out that was a lot more difficult

than anyone could imagine. Once again, you're on their terrain. You are basically fighting what is for the United States, an important war for liberty, for the North Vietnamese. There's a fight for their very existence, very similar to what we're facing in terms of the Iranian regime. And it's also a situation in which then and now the American context includes a political context in which the American people have a huge say. And here's another very interesting thing. The American people, it turns out, are in the absence of what they perceive to be a clear, and present danger to the U.S. itself, they are more concerned about matters economic than matters of national security, which can be rather abstract and ethereal and sometimes hard for the average

voter to understand. Or to put it another way, if you ask the American voter, which is more important to you, national security or the price of eggs, they might say national security and then turn around and vote on the price of eggs. That's just the way it works in this kind of electoral Republic. Okay, some really interesting things just in terms of developments over the last several days after Russian's invasion of Ukraine. As we said last week, this is now a military action, thanks to the determination of the Ukrainians, that has lasted longer than World War I. Vladimir Putin and his generals thought they were going to basically just march through Ukraine and take possession of it. Even some of the generals, they had victory uniforms with

them, thinking that they would get to wear them in a matter of days. That didn't happen. But there's some very, very interesting developments. We've talked about the fact that the Ukrainians have been fighting back nobly now for a matter of years. And furthermore, the Ukrainians are pioneering new methods of national defense. And there are significant gains. For example, the Ukrainian use of drones and missiles, rockets in particular, has been spectacularly effective, so much so that Russia's had to completely change its ground game. And by the way, it basically hasn't gained that much territory. There are so many dimensions of this we can talk about. I want to focus on one thing right and that is that when you look at the determination of the Ukrainians to fight back,

they have done remarkable things with relatively low-tech armaments and in particular weapons. And I mentioned drones and rockets. And the use of drones, by the way, has just been ingenious. And that includes drones that are able to do targeting as well as drones that carry charges and drones that are even able to carry forward what would in previous days been considered something like an infantry attack. But hold on, recent headlines are making the point that Ukraine also has a weakness, which is the absence of strategic or of ballistic missiles.

And ballistic in this case means that they're able to be directed, pinpoint directed, with a major explosive charge. And the fact is that the Russians have them, of course. They've had them for decades now. And it's also true, for example, that the Iranians have them, because the Iranians have invested in them as a part of how they were able to shut down the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. but the Ukrainians either don't have many of them or don't have enough of them.

Let's put it that way. It's not that they've had absolutely no ballistic missiles because, for one thing, they had some old Soviet missiles they were able to use in the early months of the fighting back against the Russian invasion. But the fact is that the big lesson is that if you're a superpower, guess what? You need some non-super weapons. You really do. It turns out that the United States is learning from the situation in Iran, but also especially

in terms of how Ukraine is fighting back against Russia, the United States government is learning we need to develop thousands upon thousands of cheap drones because it turns out that is a big part of the future of warfare. That was not really on the screen of American defense planners, certainly on the scale that it is now. But there's another point. And that is what the Ukrainians lack also points to the fact that if you're going to defend yourself, if you're going to be in an advanced military force. You need not only all of those, thousands upon thousands of inexpensive drones. You also need some very expensive ballistic weapons. So that's a big headline. I want to point to another one that has taken place in recent days. Last week, there were a lot of headlines

about Russia attacking a Ukrainian cathedral. For instance, the Wall Street Journal headline, Russian attacks hit cultural sites. The subhead thousand-year-old cathedral damaged and strikes on Ukraine that killed at least 11. The big building under discussion here is the Dormition Cathedral in Ukraine. As the cut line in the Wall Street Journal says, it dates to the 11th century and has been damaged in several wars. As a matter of fact, much of it was damaged and rebuilt. This is a huge issue.

Christians need to pay some attention here because we are talking about what appears to be the deliberate targeting of a very historic cathedral. Why would Russia do that? Why would Russia do that? I mean, this would appear to be something of a public relations problem, at the very least, for Russia. Russia must be intending to send a signal. Yes, they are. They're sending a signal that we just need to understand pretty quickly.

That has to do with the fact that when you look at Kiev, when you look at Ukraine, you are looking at an older Eastern Orthodox tradition than is present in Moscow. And as a matter of fact, you're talking about the fact that Kiev, Americans often called it Kiev, that Kiev is actually the ancient seat of what we now call Russian-speaking orthodoxy. Moscow's derivative of Kiev. Kiv is not derivative of Moscow. Furthermore, once Vladimir Putin began to put so much pressure on the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church declared its ancient identity

and went to the patriarch of Constantinople, that's the leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, and ask him to return to a situation of Ukrainian or Kievan autoselophie, an autoselophis church. And that means a church with its own head. And that means separate from Moscow. And here's the thing. That effectively demoted the patriarch in Moscow in two ways. Number one, it cut off a lot of his flock.

Number two, if you're going to have two of these Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox and then the Russian Orthodox, well, in the Orthodox world, pride goes to the older. And there is no question that Keev is in this sense older than Moscow. And that is a huge irritation not only to Vladimir Putin, but to Vladimir Putin's supporters in the Russian Orthodox Church and its leadership. The Metropolitan status of Kiv was established in the year 988. Think about that. 988. And it was returned to this on January the 6th, 2019 in terms of it being a Ukrainian church separate from the Russian church. And so we are talking about huge theological issues, issues of church history, you know, just think so many people in the West think nothing theological could ever be of, let's just say political or historical

history changing importance in the 21st century. Well, guess what? The refutation of that is this Russian attack on the cathedral in Ukraine. It is all about politics and history. And, yeah, theology. But finally for today, let's come back to the United States. On Thursday, the Obama Presidential Center was dedicated in Chicago. I was in Chicago. I was there for a Turning Point USA Educators Summit, but I was in the area and actually was able to go by the Obama Presidential Center, as it is known. It's not a presidential library in the sense of being an archive. And that's because the former president really didn't want it to have that kind of status. It didn't want it to have that kind of responsibility. Another little factoid here,

When you are talking about the documents of the Obama age, the Obama administration, he was elected, of course, in 2008. He left office in January 2017. Here's the big thing. About 95% of the documents never were on paper. So already, when you think about the digital revolution, about 95% of the Obama administration documents, as the Washington Post said, quote, never existed on paper, end quote. Okay, but trust me, the Obama Center is a very big deal. it was designed by architects Todd Williams and Billy Chen. It is, I would say, massive. It's also, I think, massively ugly.

And that's partly by intention. If there is an architectural style that is represented by the Obama Center, you're talking, by the way, about a tower that's 225 feet tall, I have no idea what it means. It is, in my view, not at all beautiful. It is significant. You notice it there south of the campus of the University of Chicago. One of the architects went on to say that the four sites,

are supposed to refer to four hands coming together. I can just say, I think I could speak for the average person saying it. You would have to be told that. It isn't exactly brutalism, which was a post-war architectural movement. And it was called brutalism because it just looked brutal. And it was because of largely unfinished concrete that was left as the major impression of the building. Think of the city hall in Boston. It's one of those atrocious examples of brutalist architecture. The Obama presidential center, is not mostly concrete. It includes some very expensive stone, but it does look like concrete. It's even gray, different tones of gray, so that brutalist tradition appears to be there. It's also very

interesting to know that there are those who are already calling it the Obama Lisk, simply because it does kind of look like something that you would find in the ancient world, except for the fact it does have some of those modernist lines. When you are talking about the Obama presidential Center, it's clear that former President Obama and Mrs. Obama used it as a major event, and this is entirely understandable. They used it as a major event to try to put an historical gloss on the eight years of the Obama presidency. Now, that's not a criticism. That's what one does at this kind of event. However, I did find it very interesting that we were given another example of the fact that Barack Obama, so beloved by the press, can basically be said to be.

running a non-offensive kind of message can be said to be talking about unity and all the rest and avoiding what's been described as so many of the theatrics of, well, you know, what they're criticizing and who they're criticizing. But the point is, in terms of his administration, he was not running a middle of the road government. It really was, certainly by the standards of that day, a government was committed to many radical positions, far out of step with the American people. And of course, by the end of the administration, same-sex marriage, abortion, so many other things. But also just in terms of even how the former president, when he was president, spoke of the United States in terms of our national experiment and the American role in the world. Let's just say that it's very clear, I think, that President Trump was elected in 2016, at least in part, is a reaction to that kind of messaging.

But the national media loved him then and the national media love him now. There is also something that just has to do the passage of time. And that is when there's a formal event like this, it is interesting. The national media acts like they can't read their own former articles. That's just the way it works. It's sort of like an event in which most people are going to try to say at least somewhat nice things. And yet the political dynamic and the cultural dynamics just won't go away. And part of that was because of the precise way the Obama's design the event itself.

So, for example, it included a land acknowledgement. And so as a part of the political correctness, all behind this, you have this statement. I'm going to read it as it is presented on the Obama Presidential Center's website. Quote, the Obama Foundation acknowledges the sovereign indigenous peoples who have since time immemorial inhabited and stewarded the lands, many of us call home. Let's just stop there for a moment. Since time immemorial, let's just state that if you go far enough back in human history, when you're talking about, for instance, the settlement of anything in what we now call North America,

there almost always was someone there before the people who were there before someone else, which is to say, when you say before time or since time immemorial, you're actually just dodging the hard question. The statement continues, quote, through extraordinary resilience, indigenous people have worked to combat and rightfully reverse the forces of settler colonialism. Again, an ideological term, this work toward justice demands the meaningful support of non-indigenous allies. quote, we honor the ancestors present with us and celebrate Chicago's thriving and diverse urban native community. They go on and list so many of the different groups that have claimed at least and maybe have historical claim to some tie to the area. Quote, the Obama Foundation is committed to empowering and uplifting indigenous voices and perspectives as together we strive to realize a vibrant democratic culture, end quote.

So, okay, let me just make the point, that if indeed they were going to take the demands made by many of the activists in these. groups seriously, then they would have to pay for the land to someone. But that's not what they're going to do. So instead, they put up a plaque and make sure that it's read as a part of the ceremony. Let me be clear. Political hypocrisy and virtue signaling can happen all across the spectrum, but it certainly is visible when you have the release of a land acknowledgement, even as there's a celebration of taking possession of the land. By the way, don't plan to go to the Obama a presidential center in upcoming weeks, unless you have a ticket, we are told that it is sold out through September. Now, you know, thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my

website at Albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsd.u. For information on Voice College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.