AP News in Brief at 6:09 p.m. EST

While the Trump administration has cited Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the chief concern to be addressed, officials increasingly are pointing to the threat from Iran’s ballistic missiles as a key reason to launch the attacks as well as an opportunity to take out the government’s leadership and the sense that negotiations around the nuclear program have stalled.

Trump said Monday that Iran’s conventional missile program “was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.”

Hegseth said at a separate press conference with Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the operation had a “decisive mission” to eliminate the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles, destroy the country’s navy and ensure “no nukes.”

Trump, Hegseth and Caine have not suggested any exit plan or offered signs that the conflict would end anytime soon as the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cast doubt on the future of the Islamic Republic and hurtled the region into broader instability. Caine said the biggest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East in decades would only grow because the commander in the region “will receive additional forces even today.”

War in the Mideast widens as Trump says strikes on Iran could last several weeks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel and the United States pounded Iran on Monday in a campaign that U.S. President Donald Trump said would likely take several weeks. Tehran and its allies hit back against Israel, Gulf states and targets critical to the world’s energy production.

The intensity of the attacks, the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the lack of any apparent exit plan set the stage for a prolonged conflict with far-reaching consequences. Safe havens in the Mideast like Dubai have seen incoming fire; hundreds of thousands of airline passengers are stranded around the globe; oil prices shot up; and U.S. allies pledged to help stop Iranian missiles and drones.

With no sign of the conflict abating anytime soon, Trump said operations are likely to last four to five weeks but that he was prepared “to go far longer than that.”

In a sign of concern over the potential for spiraling violence, the State Department on Monday urged U.S. citizens to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to safety risks.

“The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters. “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.”

Bill Clinton tries to distance himself from Epstein in videos released from his testimony last week

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton distanced himself themselves from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in closed-door depositions with lawmakers, according to videos that were released Monday by a House committee.

The recordings of the depositions, which spanned hours over two days last week, show how Bill Clinton told the committee that he had ended his relationship with Epstein years before the financier entered a 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Hillary Clinton told the committee she never even recalled meeting Epstein.

Both closed-door interviews before the House Oversight Committee were taken under oath Thursday and Friday.

The Clintons' testimony came as lawmakers are trying to meet demands for a reckoning over Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in New York while facing charges for sex trafficking and abusing underage girls. High-status men around the world have been forced into resignations because of revelations about their relationships with Epstein, but so far there are few signs in the U.S. of serious legal consequences coming.

The former Democratic president said he first remembered meeting Epstein when he flew aboard the financier's private jet in 2002 for the Clintons' humanitarian work, and they parted ways the year after.

In Their Words: How Trump's and his administration's statements on Iran evolved and conflicted

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iran last summer, he and his administration repeatedly declared that the attacks had obliterated the Middle Eastern country's nuclear program and set back its ability to make a nuclear weapon for years.

In the immediate runup to Saturday’s strikes with Israel on Iran, however, Trump and members of his administration began issuing more urgent warnings about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It was among the shifting — and often openly contradictory — messages sent on Iran.

After widespread protests erupted in Iran in January, for example, Trump repeatedly threatened military strikes — only to back off after he said he was assured Tehran had halted killing protesters and not carried out planned executions — except international observers say the death toll from a crackdown over the protests exceeded 7,000. At the same time, following years of scoffing at, and openly campaigning against, the idea that previous conservatives administrations had been advocates for “regime change” missions, Trump seemed to change his mind and warm to the idea.

In the aftermath of Saturday's attacks, the president and other officials have offered multiple reasons they said the latest strikes on Iran were necessary — some of which conflict with what they said over the past eight months.

—“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!” — Trump in a June 24, 2025, post on Truth Social.

FACT FOCUS: Misrepresented images spread after US and Israel strike Iran

As the U.S. and Israel continued to strike Iran on Monday following a major attack over the weekend that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, misrepresented images related to the war spread widely online.

They presented years-old footage as current, falsely claimed that U.S. military vehicles had been destroyed and erroneously claimed to show casualties of the war.

Here's a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: An image shows Khamenei's body under a pile of rubble.

Gunman was not on the FBI's radar before he opened fire on a crowded Texas bar, authorities say

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The gunman who opened fire outside a crowded Texas bar and killed two college students in an attack that wounded 14 others had not been on the radar of authorities, federal and local investigators said Monday.

The FBI and police in Austin said it’s too soon to identify the motive behind the mass shooting early Sunday that the FBI has said is being investigated as a potential act of terrorism, coming after the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran.

“Our ultimate goal in everything we do is to determine the motive,” Alex Doran, the acting agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office, said during a news conference.

Police identified the gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne. He was wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and bearing the words “Property of Allah” during the attack, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

Investigators are poring over thousands of hours of video and police said there are more than 150 witnesses to interview. “We are still in the early hours of this investigation,” said Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis.

Savannah Guthrie returns to her mother’s home in first sighting there since disappearance

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie and her sister returned to their mother’s home outside Tucson on Monday in their first sighting at the house since Nancy Guthrie went missing a month ago.

The NBC anchor, her sister Annie Guthrie and brother-in-law Tommaso Cioni walked arm in arm down the driveway, laid down yellow flowers and embraced each other in a tearful scene. The makeshift tribute at the edge of the property includes flowers, yellow ribbons, crosses, prayers, a sign that read “Let Nancy Come Home” and a statuette of an angel.

Later on Monday, Savannah Guthrie posted a photo of flowers at the tribute.

“we feel the love and prayers from our neighbors, from the Tucson community and from around the country,” Guthrie wrote, ending the sentence with a heart emoji. “please don’t stop praying and hoping with us. bring her home.”

Nancy Guthrie’s children have previously appeared in videos in which they pleaded for their mother’s return, most recently with a social media posting from Savannah Guthrie in which she said the family was offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of their mother.

Federal court rejects Trump administration attempt to slow tariff refund process

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to slow the process of refunding billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs the Supreme Court struck down as illegal last month.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit started the next phase in the refund process by sending it to a lower court to sort out.

In a court filing Friday, Trump’s Justice Department had urged the Federal Circuit to proceed cautiously and hold off for 90 days. But the judges refused.

The Supreme Court ruled Feb. 20 that Trump’s sweeping tariffs on most countries in the world were illegal, clearing the way for the importers who paid them to seek refunds.

The government had collected more than $130 billion from the tariffs by mid-December, and could ultimately be on the hook for refunds worth $175 billion, according to calculations by the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

US stocks erase sharp losses, while oil prices leap on worries about Iran war

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices leaped Monday on worries that war with Iran could clog the global flow of crude and make inflation even worse. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, swung from sharp losses to a tiny gain.

Crude prices jumped more than 6%, which will likely mean higher prices soon at gasoline pumps. That would hurt not only U.S. households, whose spending makes up the bulk of the U.S. economy, but also businesses with big fuel bills.

The S&P 500 fell as much as 1.2% at the start of trading, and cruise lines and airlines led the way lower. But U.S. stocks quickly erased those losses, in part because past military conflicts haven’t usually created sustained drops for the market, and the index finished the day with a gain of less than 0.1%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 73 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.4%. Both also came back from steep early losses.

Prices for natural gas remained higher, meanwhile, which could raise heating bills for the remainder of the winter, after a major supplier of liquefied natural gas to Europe said it would stop production because of the war. Gold climbed 1.2% as investors looked for safer things to own and as U.S. officials tried to persuade the world that this war will not last forever.

Duke extends No. 1 record in AP Top 25 as Michigan State, Nebraska and Texas Tech crash top 10

Duke is No. 1 in The Associated Press men's college basketball poll for the second straight week, extending its all-time record with the program's 149th appearance in the top spot.

The Blue Devils received 55 of 59 first-place votes in Monday's poll following lopsided wins over Notre Dame and then-No. 11 Virginia last week.

No. 2 Arizona received four first-place votes after clinching a share of the Big 12 regular-season title with Saturday's 84-61 win over No. 14 Kansas. Michigan, UConn and Florida rounded out the top five.

Duke (27-2) has been dominant defensively since losing to rival North Carolina on Feb. 7, holding its last six opponents to an average of 57 points per game.

The Blue Devils opened the week by handing Notre Dame its worst home loss since 1898 with a 100-56 win. Duke then turned its showdown with Virginia into another rout, crushing the Cavaliers 77-51 on Saturday to clinch the top seed for the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.