Thursday 22 October 2026 07:30 UTC
US and Israel Plan Possible New Attacks on Iran
US officials said Washington and Israel developed plans for renewed attacks on Iran after the November 3 midterms, with possible targets including energy and nuclear facilities and missile and drone arsenals. Donald Trump said negotiations had ended and action could come soon. The State Department was preparing to order some embassy staff and relatives to leave several Gulf countries. Separately, Iranian state media confirmed explosions at Sirik, near the Strait of Hormuz. Other accounts said sites there were struck as missile crews prepared to target commercial shipping, but identified no attacker and provided no independent damage assessment.
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A US official said Russia accepted three-way talks with Ukraine and the United States. The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin was willing in principle to resume negotiations in mid-November, possibly in Abu Dhabi, with postwar security guarantees as the focus. Volodymyr Zelensky supported negotiator-level talks as soon as possible and hoped for a meeting by early November. Russia also released Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American captured after Russian forces took Izium. Trump initially said Washington gave nothing in return, then said it had issued sanctions waivers to secure Hubbard’s release.
Researchers disclosed two critical flaws in PHP, software widely used to run websites. They said each vulnerability scored 9.2 out of 10 and could let attackers execute code without logging in, potentially affecting as many as 70% of websites worldwide. A patch arrived a day early after details leaked. Cloudflare said its protections were active, while Finland shut state internet services and the Netherlands took its cybersecurity agency’s website offline. France temporarily disabled prefecture websites while fixes were applied.