From the start, it’s meant too many things. It’s time to move on. BY NADINE EPSTEIN
Has Israel Said Shalom to ‘Shalom
This cultural essay examines the evolving meaning of the word shalom (peace) in Hebrew and how its usage has shifted within Israeli society and the broader search for hope.
The Iran Diaries
This article explores the history and current state of Iran through the lens of the editor’s father’s 2002 travel diary. It provides context for the anti-regime protests of 2026 and the enduring complexities of Iranian society. by Sarah Breger
As fighting in the Middle East entered its third week, focus has shifted to Tehran’s closure of a key maritime passage, and the potentially huge global economic impact.
For our big story this week, Jillian Ambrose explains how the war in Iran has effectively blocked the Gulf states from exporting a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the strait of Hormuz. Peter Beaumont sets out the significance of the route and the possible options to counter the blockade, while Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports on the building anger and resentment in the region over being dragged into a war they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.
Peter also looks at “the escalation trap” that lies ahead for both sides in the conflict, and we have on-the-ground reports from Jason Burke in northern Israel and William Christou in southern Lebanon, as well as a stark account of day-to-day life from inside Tehran.
Spotlight | ‘Extraordinary cruelty’ Kaamil Ahmed and Alex Clark examine the evidence that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan
Technology | Star fruit As Apple reaches its half-century, Chris Stokel-Walker rounds up its biggest triumphs and flops
Feature | Feminism’s not dead! In a stirring riposte to all those who have declared the death of the women’s movement, Rebecca Solnit outlines the advances that have been made and argues it’s no time to give up the fight
Opinion | The British right’s Maga obsession UK conservatives were once hostile to the US, but now are keen to emphasise loyalty to Trump above all else, writesKojo Koram
Culture | One win after another After 11 nominations without a single win, film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson deservedly struck gold at the Oscars with One Battle After Another, says Xan Brooks
On a Thursday evening in September, I excused myself from the family dinner table and slipped into my bedroom. I didn’t want my kids to see what I was about to do.
With the door locked behind me, I pulled out my phone and downloaded the DraftKings betting app. I felt a certain thrill as I typed in my debit-card information and deposited $500. The first game of the NFL season was a few minutes away. Anything seemed possible. …By McKay Coppins
The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate? By Jacob Stern
Even with Kristi Noem gone, the Administration’s immigration agenda shows no signs of flagging—in fact, it is leading toward a new humanitarian and legal crisis. By Jonathan Blitzer
What’s Behind Trump’s New World Disorder?
A foreign policy freed of liberal pretenses and imperial ambitions could lead to restraint—or, as the Iran attack shows, simply license hit-and-run belligerence. By Daniel Immerwahr
Who Bankrolled the American Revolution?
Our history too often sidesteps the question of finances. But sonorous ideals don’t keep an army supplied with uniforms, guns, and grub. By Adam Gopnik
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 3.15.26 Issue features Yudhijit Bhattacharjee on the quest to save Bili the baby gorilla; Daphne Merkin on the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz; Elisabeth Zerofsky on the key to Europe’s defense; and more.
Social media is fueling a black market for infant primates like Bili, who was captured in the wild and trafficked. By Yudhijit BhattacharjeeCreditIllustration by Clément Thoby
In Nigeria, customs officers and conservationists are confronting the grim impacts of the $20 billion trade. By Arlette Bashizi and Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
X’s Chatbot Started Undressing Women. Was This What A.I. Wanted All Along?
Grok Imagine’s “nudify” scandal reveals something about the dream of manhandling photos.
Venezuela gave Trump a taste of success. This isn’t the first time an American president has gotten hooked on overthrowing foreign governments. By Scott Anderson
When news breaks that dominates the agenda to the extent of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, one challenge for the Guardian Weekly team is how to keep the magazine’s covers feeling fresh, week after week, while remaining focused on the same story.
For this week’s edition, in response to Patrick Wintour’s must-read essay on how the US has ignored the lessons of two previous Gulf wars, we asked illustrator Doug Chayka to play with the idea of a Middle East that the US either cannot, or refuses to, see. Doug’s artwork neatly captures the dilemma of a Trump administration that now finds its Iran exit strategy – assuming there was one – cut off by chaos.
Spotlight | War losses mount in rural Russia Residents of a remote village in Komi Republic say dozens have left to fight in Ukraine, leaving behind grieving families and labour shortages. Pjotr Sauer reports
Science | Is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out? Insect taxonomist Art Borkent fears his field of science is fading, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered, he tells Patrick Greenfield
Feature | The miraculous survival of Nada Itrab After a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and taken from Spain to Bolivia, authorities feared the worst. They found her in the rainforest nine months later – but that wasn’t the end of her ordeal. Giles Tremlett picks up the story
Opinion |In this war, Britain’s enemy now is Donald Trump As the Iran disaster escalates, Simon Tisdall argues that Starmer should treat the US president as someone whose actions threaten the lawful, democratic way of life everywhere
Interview | Corinne Bailey Rae The English singer and songwriter was riding high with a hit album when her husband died tragically young. She discusses grief, fame and rebuilding her life with Simon Hattenstone
The United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping’s decade-long project to build an alternative to the American-led order died with him. For years, Beijing quietly assembled a network of dictatorships and client states designed to blunt American power. Iran supplied China with cheap oil and kept Washington bogged down in the Middle
The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of…..
Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have…
Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era.
When President George W. Bush invaded Mesopotamia in 2003, everybody laughed at Comical Ali, the bespectacled Iraqi information minister who kept insisting that the American “rats” were doomed as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed around him. The world moved on. Iran is not Iraq, as President Donald Trump’s supporters are so fond of saying, and Bush-eraOwen Matthews
With the exception so far of a single missile intercepted over Turkish airspace and a strike on an Azeri-controlled territory near the Iranian border, Tehran has so far declined to mess with the Turks, and for good reasons. Turkey is a member of NATO and attacking it would trigger Article 5 mutual defense measures. And
President Trump has both called for Iranians to rise up and oust the ruthless theocracy and then said that he’s fully prepared to deal with a new religious leader. By Robin Wright
The Zombie Regulator
As the cost of living continues to spiral upward, the Trump Administration is gutting the government agency built to protect Americans from financial ruin. By E. Tammy Kim
The Unmaking of the American University
For decades, research universities have relied on federal funding, with no guarantee that it will last. Now their survival may depend on compliance with the government. By Nicholas Lemann
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 3.8.26 Issue features Matthieu Aikins and Wesley Morgan on the former Zero Unit soldiers who are now living in the U.S.; Sophie Haigney on love addiction; Robert Draper on his experience taking ibogaine; and more.
His call to ‘freeze the rent’ galvanized the 69 percent of New Yorkers who don’t own their homes. But the city’s landlords claim the math doesn’t add up. By Jonathan Mahler
In the wake of the U.S. bombing of Iran and its dismissal of European allies, an anxious continent’s best chance at security runs through its largest economy. By Elisabeth Zerofsky
Boomers Daily 