Advantage Iran
The world this week
Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon

Leaders

Our cover
Advantage Iran
A month of bombing has achieved nothing. Will Donald Trump escalate, or talk?
Illustration of a row of buildings wafing and merging into each other, with an EU flag on the top of the middle building
Mythbusting on trustbusting
Europe should think twice before weakening its merger rules
A strict competition policy is not the barrier to bigger firms
The Musel E-Hub regasification terminal in the Spanish city of Gijon
Let markets work
The case against energy bail-outs
As war rages in Iran, governments must not repeat the mistakes of 2022
An employee works at the Kold Roll steel bar factory in Santa Catarina, Nuevo Leon state, Mexico
Stop the impoverishment
Mexico must unleash its private sector
Claudia Sheinbaum’s biggest problem is weak investment and growth, not Donald Trump
Sheep beside solar panels in England
Country first
England has shown the world how to replace farm subsidies
A rare Brexit dividend

Letters
A selection of correspondence
Should Europe’s pensions be reformed?
By Invitation
A portrait of Ulrike Malmendier
At war with itself
Europe’s choice: Grow, or become a vassal
Guarding whom?
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards won’t defend the regime to the last man
Briefing
An oil tanker trapped inside a glass bottle.
Unsafe passage
Hormuz is not the only weak spot for global trade
Many shipping routes are vulnerable, from the Strait of Malacca to the Panama Canal
An oil tanker twisted and contorted into a corkscrew-like form.
Stranglehold
What a battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz would look like
A lot of ships, aircraft and soldiers would have to spend a long time in harm’s way for uncertain results
Asia
Residents of a small apartment building do house chores outside their units, amid the lockdown to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in a slum area in Tondo, Manila, Philippines, May 4, 2020.
Home truths
The world’s most unaffordable housing is not where you think
India’s rebels
The end of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgency
Welcome to Chevroletstan
China is breaking into one of the world’s weirdest car markets
Southward ho!
How Chinese companies are reshaping Indonesia
Thai-ed in knots
Millions of Burmese struggle to find safety in Thailand
Banyan
Why Bangalore has India’s best billionaires
China
A man collects oysters near anti-landing spikes at a beach where the Chinese city of Xiamen is visible from afar, in Kinmen, Taiwan, on May 11, 2025.
China and Taiwan
Does the Iran war increase the risk of a Chinese attack on Taiwan?
Women’s rights
Jiang Shengnan is the most vocal woman in Chinese politics
High-rise pork pies
China’s huge pork industry is a victim of its own success
Chaguan
China’s government both drives and constrains the rise of AI
United States
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press.
From “Little Marco” to loyal lieutenant
Marco Rubio, the chameleon in the war room
AIPAC’s new playbook
America’s pro-Israel lobby is facing a backlash
Lines of control
Snarled airports and frozen funding test the new DHS secretary
Uneasy spooks
America’s spies have a lot to complain about
Into the breach
America goes on cyber-offence
Love me, legal tender
Why Donald Trump is putting his face on a coin
Lexington
For Donald Trump, Cuba is everything Iran is not

Essay
A photo collage depicting America from the 1860s to the 1920s, featuring a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, European immigrants arriving, the Statue of Liberty, and factory smokestacks rising over industrial cities.
America at 250
Industrial liberalism and its critics
America at 250
If 19th-century plutocrats are dinosaurs, we’re now in Jurassic Park
The Economist reads
Six books to understand the Gilded Age
The Americas
A rider trots past a refreshment stand at a horse festival.
Becalmed
Mexico’s broken economy
Liquid courage
Brazil has a secret weapon against oil shocks
Integration game
Why the number of Islamic schools in Canada is soaring
Middle East & Africa
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Memphis Air National Guard Base in Memphis, Tennessee
Bargain or bluff?
Donald Trump says he is close to a deal with Iran
Command and control
The Revolutionary Guards are taking over Iran
The threat of thirst
In the current Gulf war, water may prove as decisive as oil
No connection
Iran’s regime walls off the internet
Seizing the moment
Israeli settlers are growing more violent in the West Bank
The latest quagmire
How long will Israel stay in Lebanon?
From Anglo to Botswanan
Botswana prepares to take an even bigger gamble on diamonds
Europe
A woman looks at her mobile telephone as she descends on an escalator in a metro station in central Moscow on February 10, 2026
Spring offensive
Russia wants to limit contact with the outside world
German politics
Germany’s Social Democrats gaze into the abyss
French mayors
France offers some hope for defeating populists
Humbled
Giorgia Meloni’s big setback in Italy
Ecosystem warrior
Ukraine’s top drone commander wants to bleed Russia’s army dry
Charlemagne
Europe’s populist right should be outvoted rather than ostracised
Britain
Poppies in flower at the edge of a wheat field in North Yorkshire, England
A new agricultural landscape
English farming is changing quickly, for the better
Peak dog
A golden decade for British vets is coming to an end
Pints to spare
Britain’s dairy farmers are pouring milk away
RPC RIP?
What Sir Keir Starmer gets wrong about deregulation
Agents of influence
The Bank of England’s eyes and ears
Losing grandeur
Britain’s diplomatic footprint is diminishing
Good or bad ODA?
Britain’s foreign aid morphs from open-handed to hard-headed
Business
Illustration showing the swallowing of of apps, wwww, bot, Yen, phone with apps on screen,chats, user profile image, a story with likes flying off, data and shopping icons
Boogie monster
ByteDance is swallowing the internet—in China and beyond
Seeking scale
Will the EU’s new merger rules unleash a wave of dealmaking?
Silicon scandal
A new case of chip smuggling shows the limits of export controls
Bartleby
Welcome to emoji school
Oil change
The war’s biggest corporate winners and losers may surprise you
Well lubricated
How much will America’s oilmen benefit from the Iran war?
Food poisoning
Big food’s troubles go from bad to worse
Social media on trial
Meta and Google face a reckoning over social-media addiction
Schumpeter
Amazon’s unprecedented gamble on AI redemption might just work
Finance & economics
An oil barrel flying away with a person hanging at the end of a rope around it.
Here we go again
How high could global inflation go?
Smoke and horrors
Even the best-case scenario for energy markets is disastrous
Techno-Utopia
China’s new masterplan for its tech economy in 2030 and beyond
Navigating a Trumpian world
Christine Lagarde’s sober tone on the Gulf war energy shock
The expat economy
Westerners are fleeing their countries in record numbers
Buttonwood
Markets are gripped by an alarming cognitive dissonance
Free Exchange
The decline and fall of the Roman currency empire
Science & technology
A conveyor belt carrying gleaming golden brains, symbolizing China’s rapid and large-scale production of AI talent.
Picking their brains
China is winning the AI talent race
Boots on the regolith
NASA’s Moon-base plans mark a rethinking of its future
Stronger together
Autonomous swarms are the future of drone warfare
Well Informed
Is playing music good for the brain?
Culture
A pink kids’ bike leaning against a fork-in-the-road sign.
The biggest loser
Everyone knows divorce is costly. But children pay most dearly
Fascism’s first act
The forgotten man who pre-dated Mussolini and Hitler
Classical literature and art
What is the big deal with Ovid and artists?
The funny business
With “SNL UK”, Britain’s laughing stock appreciates
Back Story
Russia should not be welcome at the world’s top art show
It’s on the table
Young people all over the world are clicking with mahjong
Economic & financial indicators
Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
Chuck Norris in "Missing in Action 2: The Beginning"
The king of kicks
Chuck Norris made onions cry