The U.S. State Department on Monday urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern nations as the war with Iran entered its third day and regional security conditions deteriorated.

Israel announced Monday that it eliminated the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus in an overnight strike on Beirut, as Lebanon’s government declared it would move to prohibit the terror group’s military activities following a dramatic escalation along the northern border.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is forcefully rejecting claims that the United States and Israel are entering into a prolonged conflict with Iran, declaring that the current military campaign will be swift and decisive.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a California law that allowed public schools to conceal a student’s “gender transitions” from their parents, a policy SCOTUS ruled likely violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom President Donald J. Trump calls “secretary of war,” said Monday that Operation Epic Fury against Iran was “the most lethal, most complex, and most precise aerial operation in history,” though he declined to rule out the possibility of American ground forces becoming involved.

Iran has rejected negotiations with the United States as military escalation spread across the Middle East and into the eastern Mediterranean after the U.S. and Israel began striking the Islamic Republic early Saturday.

Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously wounded in an Iranian counterattack as fighting between the United States and Iran intensified, officials confirmed Sunday.

A Christian sanitation worker employed by the legislature of Pakistan’s Punjab province was found shot dead late Friday at a government hostel in Lahore, police and Christian rights advocates confirmed early Saturday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated that rapidly escalating tensions in the Middle East could postpone the next round of U.S.-brokered peace talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, as Moscow condemned recent U.S.-Israeli strikes on its ally Iran.

The suspect in a deadly early-morning shooting in downtown Austin that left at least two people dead and 14 others wounded was wearing clothing bearing Islamic and Iranian imagery, according to multiple media reports, as federal authorities investigate a possible connection to terrorism.