Talk of a renewed U.S. bombing campaign against Iran and its proxies is increasing as the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen deny firing missiles at the Saudi Arabian city of Medina, a holy site for Muslims around the world.

The U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis said Thursday it had intercepted a cruise missile over Medina province. The Houthis quickly distanced themselves from the thwarted attack — an attempted strike that, had it been successful, could have turned much of the Muslim world against the militant group and Iran.

Despite a current lull in direct combat between the U.S. and Iran, and President Trump’s recent statements that American forces won’t resume strikes ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, CNN reported the U.S. military has developed strike plans that would target Iranian energy and nuclear sites with the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB. 

We break down the implications associated with that development in the latest episode of the Threat Status podcast that dropped Friday morning.

With reports swirling that Kyiv has run out of U.S.-made missile and drone interceptors, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country’s allies in Europe have enough interceptors to help Ukraine survive an anticipated winter assault by Russian forces.

Mr. Zelenskyy made the comments to reporters Friday, a day after Ukrainian forces carried out offensive strikes on an oil refinery deep inside Russia, abandoning what had been an attempted truce to halt attacks by both sides on energy-related targets that Kyiv says Moscow did not heed.

The developments cap a week of escalation in the war and rising tension between Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Trump, whom the Ukrainian president has accused of abandoning Kyiv. Mr. Zelenskyy has expressed outrage over the Russian military’s continual airstrikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in open defiance of Mr. Trump’s statement at the start of the week that he had secured an agreement from Moscow that it would halt such attacks.

The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center recently carried out a test launch of a new warhead carrier for the forthcoming Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The unarmed warhead known as the Mk21A reentry vehicle was launched Oct. 9 atop a Minotaur I test rocket, the service said.

Reentry vehicles, or RVs, are cone-shaped, high-technology missile stages used to target nuclear warheads from space. They range from single to multiple warhead configurations, and the Mk21A is the next-generation weapon. “[It] is crucial to modernizing our ICBMs in response to the rapidly changing global threat picture posed by our adversaries,” said Maj. Gen. William Rogers, Air Force acquisition executive for ICBMs.

The RV is being developed by Lockheed Martin and will carry the W87-1 nuclear warhead, a new thermonuclear weapon developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a higher-yield replacement for the aging W78 warhead now on Minuteman III missiles.

The former director of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service who has been charged with espionage had close ties to a former high-ranking Chinese general, according to a report this week by German magazine Der Spiegel.

August Hanning, BND director from 1998 to 2005, was arrested Oct. 6 and charged with “treasonous espionage” for an unidentified foreign spy service in one of the most stunning spy cases since the Cold War.

As head of the Federal Intelligence Service, the English name for BND, Mr. Hanning would have had access to extremely valuable secrets, including those shared among NATO allies, meaning the case could prove to be a potentially grave compromise of Western security.

China’s “growing intelligence presence in Cuba, just 90 miles from American shores, should alarm every American,” Teo A. Babun writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times, citing satellite imagery published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that showed “significant developments at suspected intelligence facilities in Cuba.

“At Bejucal, near Havana, researchers identified a newly completed array of 32 antennas capable of intercepting and locating radio transmissions. CSIS concluded that the facility had very likely begun operating,” writes Mr. Babun. “The findings build on CSIS research identifying four Cuban sites that may support Chinese signals intelligence activities: Bejucal, Wajay, Calabazar and El Salao, near Santiago de Cuba.”

But the “danger extends beyond military surveillance and intercepted communications,” writes Mr. Babun, president and CEO of Miami-based nonprofit Outreach Aid to the Americas. “Beijing’s expanding influence raises another troubling question,” he writes. “Could China’s authoritarian model help the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua become more effective at curtailing religious freedom?”

• Oct. 19 — U.S.-Taiwan Relations in the Trump Era, Stimson Center

• Oct. 20 — Toward a New Golden Age of Science: A Conversation with White House Office of Science and Tech Director Michael Kratsios, American Enterprise Institute

• Oct. 21 — A Discussion with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Andrew Puzder, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 22 — What’s at Stake in the Israeli Election? Brookings Institution 

• Oct. 27 — Chemistry of Combat: Rebuilding America’s Energetics Base, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 28-29 — China’s Power: Up for Debate 2026, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Oct. 30 — Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, on U.S. Strategy and Security in Africa, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 17 — Special Threat Status Event: The Golden Age of Space, Threat Status

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX