The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Episode Date: August 25, 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 new U.S. ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ war strategy against Iran, the history and function of modern political polling, and the influence of prediction markets on modern politics.Part I (00:14 – 10:20)The New War Strategy Against Iran: The U.S. is Calling for ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ to Squash Iranian Economy to End the U.S-Iran ConflictBessent Launches ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ to Isolate and Squeeze Iran by The Wall Street Journal (Brian Schwartz, Laurence Norman, and Alexander Ward)Part II (10:20 – 17:11)How Did We Get Into Such a ‘Wild West’ of Political Polling? The Important History and Function of Modern Political PollingWhy Polling Chaos Could Create Big Problems for American Politics by The New York Times (Reid J. Epstein)Part III (17:11 – 26:00)The Influence of Prediction Markets on Modern Politics: Young Men and Gambling Markets are Having a Massive Influence on Modern Polling – There are Big Issues HereSign 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 Tuesday, August 25, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. When we talk about war, we talk about warfare, particularly in the modern age, we think of missiles, rockets, fighters, we think of destroyers and aircraft carriers. We think about drones as an innovation, changing the landscape and the face of warfare. We think about the prospect of artificial intelligence. What we often don't think about is, economics. But it is really important to understand how tightly tied together warfare, foreign policy, and economic matters really are. Now, of course, we're talking about this because of Operation Economic Outcast. That was the announcement coming from the Trump administration. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant unveiled what's described as, quote, a sweeping campaign of financial sanctions and

diplomatic pressure designed to sever Iran's remaining links to the global economy. End quote. Now, you also had overt calls to other nations, most importantly, the allies of the United States, other nations and the modern economy, calling on them to join in this effort, Operation Economic Outcast. The effort is to bring massive economic pressure on Iran. Is this going to work or is it not going to work? Well, time will tell. The arguments for doing this have to do with the basic economic fragility of the Iranian project. And so as you're looking at Iran, you're looking at what in other circumstances would be considered just dire economic conditions.

And that is something that is causing widespread suffering. It also is a problem when it comes to Iran because you're looking at the fact that it has had so much wealth in oil, but that oil basically is off the normal world market. And you're also talking about the fact that Iran has huge problems, including running out of water when it comes to its capital city, looking at the process. of actually having to move the capital city of the nation in the context of war against the United States of America. And so Iran is in a very difficult situation. It has already been confronted with sanctions over the course of the years, going all the way back to 1979 and the Iranian Islamic Revolution. You have had economic sanctions that have isolated Iran, but Iran has continued to work around that isolation in the so-called dark economy. And this

means that, for instance, it's still selling oil to China. China is not recognizing the sanctions and is doing direct business with them. We also know that Iran's been doing a lot of business with its near neighbor, Russia, and that has sometimes been overt, sometimes covert. But in any event, at least some economic analysts are asking the question, what exactly does the United States have as the stick here, as the pressure? And the reality is that there is always the possibility of greater pressure, greater isolation, greater sanctions. And speaking of the goals of this operation, Operation Economic Outcast, the Secretary of the Treasury said that the goal is, quote, the economic asphyxiation of this regime, end quote, to strangle the regime. Can it work?

Well, that's an open question before you get to the politics. And the reason for that is that when you talk about the economy, you'll talk about the global economy, you're really talking about three different things. All right. So let's name the three different things. Number one, you're talking about the publicly acknowledged legal economy. So that's the publicly acknowledged legal economy. And so that's what you have in relations between the United States and Germany and Britain and Italy. And you could just go down the list. That's normal economics.

And of course, there are all kinds of foreign policy issues. Just think of the tariffs issue that can complicate it. But at least that's an honest upfront. It is a public and policed market. Okay. Then on the other extreme, you have what is common. You know, it's the black market. And the reason it's called a black market is because of darkness. It is done undercover. It is illegal. The black market means that during prohibition, you're smuggling rum, you know, onto the coastal cities of the United States in order to make a huge profit when you sell it in Cincinnati. You have this massive dark economy. Now, that dark economy is an economy that often is calculated in the most. multiple trillions of dollars because you're talking about some things. Most importantly right now, just think of the drug trade. If you want to think of the black market and you're thinking, where's the big money? Just say the drug trade. There is no legal market for those dangerous

narcotics. They are nonetheless sold on the streets of major cities all over the world, including the United States. That's the black market. Okay, so you have the public, you have the policed, the official markets. That's most of the economy in the world. but when you are talking about the black market, you're talking about something that at times rivals the other economy, at least in terms of profitability, not necessarily just in terms of the total amount of value, but profitability. And let's just state the obvious. You have organized crime going into illegal activities precisely because the profit margins are so high. The risks are high, too. Okay. So those are the two. You have the public official open markets, and then you have

have the dark markets. You have the black market. Okay, so I said there are three. And the problem is, is that there is an entire sector between the two. And so as is so often the case, and Aristotle notice this, when you just look at the world, sometimes things just fall out this way. You have this and you have that, and then you've got something in the middle that's neither this nor that. And this is the kind of market in which you have some actual states, governments, very much involved in activities that are not accepted, not legal, not recognized, and not policed, but they are real. They are real to the trillions of dollars. And that's where Iran's been doing an awful lot of its business.

Iran has been active even in the darkest areas of the economy, but the big money is in that middle area. And it is interesting that the question for the current administration in the United States is whether or not it can really put the squeeze on two out of the three. in order to basically bring so much economic pressure on Iran that the regime will relent. Okay, is that likely to happen? The answer to that is no. And I don't mean that as a political statement. That's just an analysis. You look at this. Economic sanctions by themselves rarely bring about this kind of change. However, the Trump administration has already used warfare. It has already

used armaments in military force. And that was not sufficient. And as I said, given the asymmetry of this situation, the United States is simply not going to devote, say, an invasion of troops. We're not going to have a D-Day in Iran, and Iran knows it. And so its strategy is to simply survive what kind of military attacks come from the United States and Israel, and those have been largely through missiles and ballistic weapons and, of course, air strikes and other things. They survived that. Now, there was massive damage done. The president wasn't wrong. Massive, massive damage was done. And in any normal regime, in any normal regime, in any normal government, that damage would have been so significant that the government almost surely

would have fallen. But in Iran, it's not a popular government. It's an autocracy. It's a totalitarian government. It's a regime of Islamic radicals in control of the country, having its own police, its own army, and furthermore, its own mystery about who actually is in control of anything at any given time. We as American citizens just kind of assume that experts somewhere do know the difference. That may be an illusion. May also be true, at least, in terms of with whom do you have a conversation or is a conversation even to be had. Okay, so the bottom line is this. Is this likely to work? Well, it's not an unpredictable response. And this is something that the American government can try. And that's what it's trying to do. And yet, at the same time, when you're looking at these three

sectors of the economy and you have that public economy, that's where Iran's been largely shut out for a long time. And so it's hard to imagine how there could be many more sanctions added to that big public accountable legal economy. It's hard to know how much more could be done. When it comes to the black market, so to speak, that other extreme, well, it's unlikely these kinds of sanctions are going to have any effect on that at all. It's the middle that is the matter. That's what's going to be interesting. how many people are going to be scared off by this kind of American activity, Operation Economic Outcast, and will fear sanctions coming on them from the United States or negative economic impact on them from the United States and allies. It's going to be very interesting to see this is a predictable move, and it's one that makes a great deal of sense at this moment.

But let's understand the big difference here. The asymmetry is not just in that Iran doesn't have the modern weaponry and all the massive force that the United States has. It's not just that it doesn't have the economic leverage that the United States has. It has, or at least thinks it has, enough to survive. That is not the American equation at all. And the American people right now are not thinking about Iran in terms of desperation. All the strong men in control of Iran have to do is survive. Survive this and survive that.

That for them is victory. That just is an asymmetry that's very difficult to overcome. regardless of whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, or for that matter, whether you are the United States of America or the United States of America and our allies combined. And at least for Christians, we need to understand this is a part of the brokenness of the world, of the effect of the fall. This is what happens. You have not only rogue people, you have rogue states. That's what Iran has been since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. it is not about to change its stripes, regardless of the missiles, regardless of the drones, regardless of the economics. Now, I want to come back and let's talk about a political issue.

And of course, it's very germane here in the United States with the midterm elections coming up. Primary has just been held, of course, all across the country to a great surprise in some cases. It raises the issue of polling. And I think it's good for Christians to think about this, because we do believe that truth, sometimes is reducible to numbers. We do believe that numbers are real because we believe in a universe that is real and value that is real. However, we also know that all of this can be manipulated, just as language can be manipulated. Numbers can be manipulated. Let's just to talk about a couple of things that have happened recently. Number one, we were told everyone knew that

the socialist candidate in the Democratic primary was going to win and win convincingly in Wisconsin. that Democratic Socialist candidate lost. There were those who were ready to call that election long before it was held and even days before it was held, and yet the numbers just didn't turn out as predicted at all. You also have a situation in the Senate race in Michigan. Once again, you have someone from the progressive left, rather the far left, and people are saying he's way, way, way ahead. And it turns out that he wins within a percentage point, the Democratic nomination.

And so a lot of people are saying, how in the world did this happen? You have lots of situations right now in which the polling is not only off, it's way off, and that raises huge questions. I think it's good for Christians to take a step back and ask ourselves, how do we get here? And what are all these things and what do they mean? So let's just talk about polling for a moment. When you talk about polling, you're talking about the idea that you can come up with a scientific analysis that will predict the future by asking people where they are in the present. Okay? The idea is you can ask a small sample. And if that sample is, representative. That's the key word. If it's a representative sample, then you can extrapolate future

developments. And so if you have, say, 100 people in a room and they are 100 likely voters, and you ask them, who are you going to vote for between candidate A and candidate B? If 68 out of the 100, say they're for candidate A, and that really is a representative sample, then you've got a pretty good idea that candidate A is in a significant lead over candidate B. The problem is that we're actually working backwards in terms of the accuracy of these polls. And that's an interesting thing. Most things you think we're working forward. In this case, we're working backwards.

And the history really is interesting. Trust me on this. So as you're talking about the modern history of political polling, where would you go? Well, you could go back to some early efforts that were at least partly disastrous. And one basically cost a literary magazine, it's respect. but it was 1936 when you had the first major poll undertaken by what became known as the Gallup Organization. And in that 1936 race, the race was basically called in a fairly accurate way by Gallup because they actually did have a representative sample from across the country. And that is just another reminder that a lot of these techniques in terms of surveys and polling had a lot to do with advertising and the consumer economy before it was applied to popular.

politics, but the stakes and politics are so high. Guess what? It was inevitable that there would be an invasion of all of this into modern politics. So just give the date, 1936, from that point onward, you have had news reports and anticipation and political insiders referring to polls, this poll, that poll. But as the nation has grown larger as the polling industry, and you can say that entire related industry, has grown so large and so complex, you have a situation in which claims are being made that simply aren't backed up by the electoral results. Okay, so let's talk about why. Well, a couple of reasons why.

By the way, the New York Times had a headline story yesterday. Polling's Wild West landscape creates problems in November. Bad surveys, betting odds, and false narratives. Reid Epstein is the reporter in the story, and that is interesting. But I'm talking about the far larger issue, which is how we got here. Now, why would we get here? Well, we get here because even as you're trying to sell soap, campaigns are trying to sell candidates. And so ivory soap is one of the classic examples, you know, 99 and something 100% pure.

You know, you come up with this, Quaker Oats, all kinds of things in which there were early advertising campaigns. And people wanted to know, do they work or do they not? And that's one of the reasons you get the response polling. And that's how you end up with this whole apparatus. us. But the point is, if you're selling soap and it's not selling like you want, then you have to figure out how you're going to talk about your product or position your product so that people will buy it. More people will buy it. Well, you can see why that works as an immediate application to politics. You're trying to elect a candidate. You want to make that candidate as electable as

possible. You want a sufficient number of voters to vote for that candidate. You've got to figure out what kind of messaging, what kind of policies, what kind of profile do you really need to put before the public. And of course you say, well, if you're selling soap, you know, that's soap. But if you're selling a presidential candidate, it can't be the same. I regret to tell you in so many ways it is exactly the same. As I said, it was really 1936 and the Gallup poll then that set the stage. There are those who try to say that the polling examples in the United States go all the way back to 1824. That's when Andrew Jackson was elected president. But no one was claiming that was an industry. It was just an interesting anything, probably actually had more to do with gambling than just about anything else.

But as you're looking at polling in the United States, it's interesting. The academic community has been concerned about this for a long time. I have an article here from Public Opinion Quarterly. And one of the reasons it's important is because of this journal, this academic journal, actually was born in the birth of polling. And it's about not only elections, this public opinion quarterly has a lot to do with things, you know, we'll be talking soon. I guarantee you about some of the new data on what Americans are thinking about, say, the transgender movement.

So it's not just about politics, but I guarantee you, electoral politics is always pretty close here. You're looking at all kinds of things. There has been, according to this article, a 900% increase in trial heat polls between 1984 and 2000. So that's already 26 years old. But during that period, 1984 to 2000, the polling in. industry in terms of the products increased 900%. Since then, I'm going to bet you we're in the four-digit category. And now it's not only the polling and the official organizations, it's the prediction markets, which are about betting. Okay, so we're talking about a further

complication. But let's just come back to the polls about the primaries, especially in the Democratic side. That was more interesting this year. And that's often the case. The party out of power is often more colorful and interesting. And that's exactly the case with the Democrats. And let's just think about this for a moment. Why were the polls so far off? Well, for one thing, even before you get to that question, modern polling is more difficult

because when you were guaranteeing a representative sample is much easier to do in the age of landlines. That's right. It was much easier to do when you had a house or an apartment with a phone in it, someone would answer, and then that person would respond to a poll. Because then you knew you were talking to a live human being who lived in that house or apartment, in that neighborhood, in that congressional district. You had different neighborhoods, different socioeconomic conditions.

You could predict an awful lot from that. In the age, like when Gallup was really so famous in this, that company, by the way, has withdrawn from political polling. That should tell you something. But when that company and similar companies were at their heyday, you'd have pollsters who would be on the phone calling a representative sample. And it was incredibly predictable in many ways. Now, it didn't always work even in the 1948 presidential campaign. The election was called by a major Chicago newspaper on the basis of polls for Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York.

And so Dewey defeats Truman was the headline, and it was a jubilant president. Truman, who was unexpectedly in that case, reelected, who held up that newspaper with its quite false headline. Big grin on the president's face. That has not happened in a classic form since then, but the other big change is that even as you had more predictability when there's someone answering a phone or there was a firm address and something happened by mail, when you start abstracting from that in the digital age, everything gets really loose. Everything gets very loose. and let me just tell you, you're a part of the problem, and I'm a part of the problem, and I don't apologize, and I don't think you apologize for not being a part of the problem.

And that is, very few people actually participate in many of these surveys. And you have to find some way to entice people to participate in these surveys. And then, even then, you're not sure exactly what you've got because people have to self-identify. Okay, so that's the second problem. The polling gets really complicated because you don't, You don't have someone talking on a wire to a phone where someone you can have great assurance. You know what you're dealing with. You do with people who basically you can buy all kinds of pre-sorted and pre-arranged demographic information, economic information, and all the rest.

I'll just tell you it's not that predictable. Here's another problem. People, an astounding percentage of people, and I'm not going to give you a number because I haven't taken a poll. But an astounding number of people don't vote in the midterm elections. And even if they do vote, many of them make the decision of how they're going to vote. And when you think about the margin of a win, a lot of it can have to do with people who in the last hours, days certainly, but maybe even in the last hours, make the decision of how they're going to vote. Those are obviously not deeply committed voters either way. But sometimes an election is actually driven by that margin, the undecided category that has to decide once they get in.

And so they will often light up holsters. This is something else that you now have where pollsters, when you look at these far-left candidates, well, they had much higher name recognition in some cases because the media is talking about them. If people said they were going to vote for them, but it turns out they obviously either didn't vote or didn't vote as they said they were going to vote. This article from Public Opinion Quarterly, by the way, says that one of the biggest problems is that many people who say they're going to vote for candidate X, not only don't vote for candidate X, they don't vote. So when you look at people who say they're surely going to vote, they are likely to vote. And sometimes you see the polling data broken down into this. And by the way, you only see it if you're looking for it.

If you're just listening to a news broadcast or you're looking at a newspaper article, there may be a tiny little place where they say this is the margin of error and this is how many respondents were there. The point is even the people who are officially reporting this material, if you go down into the data, an awful lot of people are in the likely voter, which means maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Let me put it this way. Candidates have to pay attention to the polls, but most will say that what comes from the polling data, which is more important than anything else, is directional energy. So it's not so much they think this number is going to be replicated on Election Day.

It is, what does it take to get the numbers for me higher? What does it take to get the numbers for our campaign higher? What do we have to do? And, of course, this raises a host of other issues as a candidate going to come up with his or her position on important issues based upon the polling. Well, obviously, some of them are. And one of the most interesting things to watch and we'll be talking about this is how many people you have who are talking about data centers in a completely different way than they were talking about them a year ago. You have governors. We'll be talking about this.

who held press conferences to announce a giant data center coming in, and they're now saying, you know, we have big concerns about this, and so we're going to put a one-year moratorium in the state. That's a separate issue, but it does say they're not so much watching the data centers. They're watching the data. They're looking at public opinion, and guess what? If you're Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, and you want to be reelected, you had better pay attention to those numbers. It's the movement in the numbers that will likely get the greatest attention.

Then, just as we get ready to close, let me say you add the prediction markets, and I think there are horribly urgent moral issues about the prediction markets. But this has to do with what can only be described as gambling. And so what are the odds that candidate X versus candidate Y is going to get elected, or you put this down to a ballot measure of anything? And yet you talk about an unrepresentative sample, and this again, is from a, as from this article in public opinion quarterly. Listen to this. When it comes to the prediction markets, quote, traders are not representative of likely voters. They tend to be young, male, well-educated,

and high-income, and they do not even need to be eligible to vote to participate in the prediction markets. And so you think about, okay, let's add some complexity. Here you have a sampling of relatively well-educated, high-income, young-male aggressive prediction market. participants. They're basically gambling. And if you take that data as representative of how people are going to actually vote, no, you're basing your opinion upon what that very interesting demographic of young, male, affluent, educated people, what their betting will be the case. That's an astounding circle when you think about it. It's like a dog chasing its own tail. And you know what? It may make money for the prediction markets and for those who participate in them. That doesn't necessarily

have anything to do with how the voters are going to make a decision. On the other hand, maybe the scary thing is that one day it will. The conclusion of this document at Public Opinion Quarterly goes back to the 50th anniversary edition of the journal, in which Philip Converse, quote, observed that from the very onset in the 1930s, public opinion polling has been closely wedded to the study of popular democratic politics. End quote. That same is basically so obviously true that it doesn't seem to be all that important. Then again, maybe that's the most you can say. It has been closely wedded to the study of popular democratic politics. That is opinion polling. I guess you could put it this way. That is about 100% absolutely certain,

according to polls, to mean something or nothing. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsketeas.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.