A profile of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister.

Iran’s sex-obsessed old guard reacts to a state where “the majority of the population is young.… Young people by nature are horny. Because they are horny, they like to watch satellite channels where there are films or programs they can jerk off to.… We have to do something about satellite television to keep society free from this horny jerk-off situation.”

A clandestine meeting between Western journalists and Hezbollah fighters in a Beirut strip mall.

The United States, which took a forceful stance on other Arab revolts, remained relatively passive in the face of the kingdom’s unrest and crackdown. To many who are familiar with the region, this came as no surprise: of all the Arab states that saw revolts last year, Bahrain is arguably the most closely tied to American strategic interests.

A report on Bahrain, the Arab Spring’s most ill-fated uprising.

All violence is not like all other violence. Every Jewish death is not like every other Jewish death. To believe otherwise is to revive the old typological thinking about Jewish history, according to which every enemy of the Jews is the same enemy, and there is only one war, and it is a war against extinction, and it is a timeless war.

A reporter makes it his mission to track down all 42 members of a platoon after their service in Iraq.

The tiny, insular Tehran rap scene.

How a failed 1979 sci-fi project called Lord of Light became the centerpiece of a C.I.A. rescue plan for six Americans captured during the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

How the contradiction-rich “country the size of Connecticut” that birthed Al-Jazeera has played an integral and surprising role in the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

How an academic found herself imprisoned by Qaddafi.

A motorcycle trip through Syria as it descends into chaos.

Inside the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan:

The U.S. government has lied to itself, and to its citizens, about the nature and actions of successive Pakistani governments. Pakistani behavior over the past 20 years has rendered the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism effectively meaningless.