America and Israel are at war with Iran, a fact that should be neither shocking nor surprising. Both countries have been targeted by the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. Both countries have engaged in painful battles with the regime’s proxies. Both nations battled Iran for 12 days last year; Israel targeted nuclear assets and other key military targets, paving the way for a crescendo of American strikes that hammered Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
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
Some weeks I head out of the office on a Friday afternoon with an uneasy feeling that our best-laid plans for next week’s Guardian Weekly might not look quite the same by Monday. This was one of those weeks.
While the scope and power of the US-Israel attack on Iran – not least the successful targeting of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other senior leaders – took many by surprise, the drums of war had been building for a while. With hindsight, last week’s failed nuclear talks may simply have been cover for what was to come.
As war unfurled dramatically across the Middle East, it was impossible to predict the consequences on a range of fronts, from the likelihood of regime change in Iran to the impact on America’s regional allies under attack, or the ripple effect on global energy prices and disruption to international travel.
Spotlight | Can the Louvre rediscover its joie de vivre? After a heist and the departure of its boss, the famous Paris museum is wrestling with repairs, strikes and a criticised renovation plan, reports Jon Henley
Science | Do lizards hold the key to how nature works? The emergence of a new group of common wall lizards offers an insight into how variety within nature can help conserve species, writes Roberto García-Roa
Interview | The world according to Gavin Newsom He’s the Democratic politician with movie-star looks, dogged by accusations of being a smooth‑talking elitist. But Gavin Newsom may just win the most powerful office in the world.Jonathan Freedlandfinds out why
Opinion | Labour needs to wake up to the dawning of a new political era After last week’s disastrous showing in a byelection, the government must accept voters no longer want two-party politics, argues John Harris
Culture | The wild and witty paintings of Rose Wylie Roaring into her 90s, the rebellious artistis now sought after by galleries worldwide and her works fetch huge sums. Melissa Denes visited her studio
The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor last week, after allegations he had shared confidential information with the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sent shock waves around the world.
What happens next is unclear, but the ramifications will go far beyond the former prince, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein. It was one of the most consequential days for Britain’s monarchy in generations, shattering the traditional aura of royal mystique and raising questions of accountability, deference and whether the royal family should have acted sooner.
In a powerful essay for our big story this week, Stephen Bates asks whether the royal family can survive the unfolding scandal.
Spotlight | The limits to the supreme court’s assent Last week’s declaration by the conservative-heavy court that Trump’s sweeping tariffs are unlawful is a major setback for the president, writes Ed Pilkington
Health | Why big pharma stands to gain from weight-loss pills Oral tablets could bring obesity treatment into the mainstream, with the sector predicted to be worth $200bn by the end of the decade. Julia Kollewe reports
Special report | The road to war in Ukraine In a remarkably detailed piece drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders, Shaun Walker explains how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans – and why nobody believed them
Opinion | A degree? A trade? Every rung for young people is a trap Is it to be a degree and heavy debt when graduate jobs are shrinking? Or forgoing a degree, knowing society still worships them? Confused, angry: who wouldn’t be, asks Jason Okundaye
Culture | Big in Beijing (but less so in Blackpool) James Balmont’s band, Swim Deep, plays to crowds of hundreds across the UK – but in China, they perform in front of tens of thousands. And they’re not the only ones
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