The assassination of a Hamas chief in Lebanon. A terror attack on mourners of an Iranian former general. Commercial shipping in the Red Sea targeted by Yemeni rebels, and a US airstrike in Iraq. All were separate events in the Middle East last week but all were linked, in one way or another, to the presence of autonomous but Iranian-backed militia forces in the region. When asked to visualise the threat of war engulfing the Middle East, for this week’s cover, illustrator Carl Godfrey took a literal approach. “I wanted to convey the tense and unpredictable situation,” says Carl, “and there’s nothing more tense than looking down the barrel of a gun. Especially when those barrels are pointing in all directions, and the risk of war is expanding in all directions.” As Peter Beaumont and Patrick Wintour write, the chances of a wider war may now rest on Iran’s opaque intentions, and how much control it really has over its “axis of resistance”. And opinion writer Nesrine Malik argues that fears of escalation miss the point that war is already happening in the Middle East. In the UK, a TV drama has brought a sudden new focus to the Post Office Horizon accounting scandal, which resulted in the wrongful convictions of hundreds of workers. Mark Sweney describes how some of those affected had their lives ruined, and provides the background to arguably the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. Two very dif ferent long reads are at the heart of this week’s edition. For years, our world affairs editor Julian Borger thought of his great-aunt Malci as a gentle eccentric – until he discovered the secret role she played in the Austrian resistance against the Nazis. Then, for those of us deep in new year abstinence, Adam Phillips’s philosophical consideration of what it means to give things up offers plenty of food for thought. In Culture, the actor and director Jodie Foster tells Emma Brockes about films, family and fame over her remarkable 58-year career. And in the Books pages, Bibi van der Zee casts a critical eye over an optimist’s guide to the climate crisis. And for anyone still suffering the waistline after-effects of Christmas, there’s a healthy and delicious bean, kale and tomato cassoulet recipe from Rukmini Iyer to get you back on track.