The company, which moved its headquarters to Irvine from Washington, D.C. in 2023, laid off 296 employees Feb. 27 at Supernals Orange County operations along Laguna Canyon Road and Waterworks Way and at facilities in Fremont and its Mojave test site, the spokesman confirmed in a statement.

The company has not yet made a state filing announcing the layoffs with the Employment Development Department. The news was first reported by the Orange County Business Journal.

“This decision is a strategic pivot to ensure our staffing and cost structures are optimized for the long-term delivery of our market-aligned aircraft design,” the spokesman said. Hyundai Motor Group remains committed to the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) business as part of its future mobility vision, and Supernal will continue to serve as the groups dedicated AAM execution arm for aircraft development.”

The spokesman said Supernals focus “remains on stabilizing the company, shaping a new business model, and developing a commercially viable aircraft.”

He said all of the company’s work would be consolidated to its Irvine headquarters.

Last September, Hyundai Motor Group shook up leadership at its $1.7 billion Supernal electric aircraft startup.

The concept, which paused its aircraft programs to evaluate next steps, has been slow to demonstrate its autonomous flying technology at a test facility at the Mojave Air & Space Port. Meanwhile, rivals have surged ahead with development of their own 'electric vertical take-off and landing' aircrafts, or eVTOL.

The South Korean automaker said Jaiwon Shin resigned Aug. 31 as Supernals chief executive officer of Hyundais Advanced Air Mobility Division and was moved into an adviser role to help transition new leadership.

Following last summer’s layoffs of 10% of its workforce in California, the company said it would have 500 workers remaining throughout the company.

The spokesman said between 70-80 employees remain at Supernal.

WASHINGTON (AP) ' The Supreme Court seemed likely Monday to loosen a federal law that bars marijuana users from owning guns in a case that crossed typical political lines.

A majority of justices appeared to lean toward a narrow ruling in favor of a Texas man who argued he shouldnt have been charged with a crime just because he owned a gun and smoked marijuana a few times a week.

The Trump administration asked the high court to revive a criminal case against Ali Danial Hemani under a law that bans all illegal drug users from owning guns. But both liberal and conservative justices seemed skeptical.

'What is the governments evidence that using marijuana a couple of times a week makes someone dangerous?' said conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The Trump administration has asked the court to strike down other gun control laws in the past, but Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris defended the illegal drug user law as a reasonable measure to keep firearms from potentially dangerous people.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, though, pointed out that a growing number of states have legalized cannabis, though it remains illegal on a federal level. 'What do we do with the fact that marijuana is sort of illegal and sort of isnt and that the federal government itself is conflicted on this?' Justice Neil Gorsuch said.

He was part of the conservative majority court that expanded gun rights with a landmark case in 2022 known as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. The court said that any gun laws must have a strong grounding in the nations historical traditions. Liberal-leaning Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said a ban on firearms for cannabis users didnt seem to have strong historical roots. 'I think your argument sort of falls apart under the Bruen test,' she said.

The government pointed to historical laws that barred 'habitual drunkards' from having guns, calling that clear historical evidence in favor of the law.

But an attorney for Hemani, Erin Murphy, said those laws were for extreme cases of people who were almost continuously drunk.

There are many modern cannabis users who regularly take gummies as sleep aids, for example, who are very capable of making safe decisions about firearms, Murphy said.

The case made for some unusual political alliances. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association both supported Hemanis case, as did cannabis legalization groups like NORML. On the other side were gun-safety groups like Everytown, which usually finds itself on the other side of the Trump administration on Second Amendment issues.

Some justices, however, appeared concerned that a ruling for Hemani could allow more weapon possession by people who use more dangerous drugs, or require courts to frequently make in-depth considerations about the level of dangerousness presented by a given substances.

'It just seems to me that this takes a fairly cavalier approach to the necessary consideration of expertise and the judgments we leave to Congress and the executive branch,' Chief Justice John Roberts said.

The court is expected to decide the case by the end of June.

WASHINGTON (AP) ' The White House on Monday attributed a large red spot on President Donald Trumps neck to a skin cream he is using, without elaborating on what condition it is treating.

The redness drew widespread attention Monday, when news photographers captured close-up images of the presidents neck during a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

'President Trump is using a very common cream on the right side of his neck, which is a preventative skin treatment, prescribed by the White House Doctor,' Sean Barbabella, the presidents doctor, said in a statement. 'The President is using this treatment for one week, and the redness is expected to last for a few weeks.'

The White House did not immediately respond to follow-up questions, such as what the cream is, when Trump began the treatment and what condition it is supposed to prevent. Zoomed-in photos from at least as far back as an 'angel families' event at the White House on Feb. 23, a day before his State of the Union address, show visible redness on the presidents neck.

The presidents medical report from his April 2025 physical noted that he was taking mometasone cream 'as needed' for an unspecified skin condition.

Trump, 79, became the oldest president to have taken the oath of office when he was sworn in last January. In particular because of his advanced age, Trumps health is closely scrutinized.

Barbabella said in December that Trump had MRI imaging on his heart and abdomen in October as part of preventive screening for men his age, with the results being 'perfectly normal.' That October physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center found that Trump is in overall 'exceptional health,' according to Barbabella.

WASHINGTON (AP) ' A federal judge agreed on Monday to temporarily suspend the latest version of a Trump administration policy that requires members of Congress to provide a weeks notice before they can visit immigration detention facilities.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington ruled that a group of Democratic lawmakers is likely to succeed in showing that the seven-day notice requirement is illegal and exceeds the governments statutory authority.

The judge said the Republican administration hasnt cited any 'concrete examples of safety issues posed by congressional visits without advanced notice.'

Thirteen House members sued to challenge the Jan. 8 policy issued by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Cobb had blocked a previous version of the policy in December. She ruled that its likely illegal for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to demand a weeks notice from members of Congress seeking to visit and observe conditions in ICE facilities.

'Plaintiffs are undoubtedly frustrated with Defendants repeated attempts to impose a notice requirement,' Cobb wrote. 'But in taking further action, Defendants are required to abide by the terms of the Courts order and act consistently with the legal principles announced in this opinion.'

However, Noem secretly reinstated another notice requirement one day after an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis. It was nearly identical to the version that Cobb blocked in December.

Three days after the deadly shooting, three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota were stopped from visiting an ICE facility near Minneapolis. The Department of Homeland Security didnt disclose the new version of the policy until after U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig initially were turned away from the facility, according to plaintiffs attorneys.

A law bars the government from using appropriated general funds to prevent members of Congress from entering DHS facilities for oversight purposes. Cobb found that its 'highly likely' that President Donald Trumps administration used restricted funds to promulgate and enforce the new policy.

Cobb was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

WASHINGTON (AP) ' A federal court on Monday rejected the Trump administrations 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, Trumps 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 Trumps 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.

But the Supreme Court offered no guidance on refunds; its decision did not even mention them. Now the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York will decide how the complicated refund process should proceed.

'I would expect the Court of International Trade to quickly issue an order requesting a status update from the government on their plans with respect to refunds (or expedited briefing),' said trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. 'I expect the court to take an aggressive posture, asking the government to justify how they intend to comply with the Supreme Courts ruling.'

Siddartha Rao, a partner at law firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, said he has been getting a lot of calls from clients with questions.

'We are somewhat in uncharted territory,' he said.

The Trump administration has been reaching for new tariffs to replace the ones the Supreme Court struck down.

One question, he said, is how the government might actually pay for these refunds.

'Everyone is sort of cognizant of the fact that its not like theres over a hundred billion dollars sitting in, you know, in a room somewhere to just cut checks,' Rao said. 'So, you know, this is a Treasury problem, and it may very well be that the administration is reimposing tariffs for the reasons that its cited … its important for strategic trade agreements and for bargaining power and all of that. But it also might be that they need to raise revenue to pay out refunds.'

Mae Anderson reported from New York.

AP Writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this story.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ' The gunman who opened fire outside a crowded Texas bar and killed two people in an attack that wounded 14 others was not on the radar of authorities before the shooting, federal and local investigators said Monday.

Both the FBI and police in Austin said Monday that its 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 FBIs 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.

The gunman legally bought the weapons used in the attack several years ago in San Antonio, Davis said.

She identified the two victims as 21-year-old Savitha Shan and 19-year-old Ryder Harrington.

Harrington was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Texas Tech University, his fraternity said in an Instagram post.

Diagne was originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

He first entered the U.S in 2000 on a B-2 tourist visa and became a lawful permanent resident six years later after marrying a U.S. citizen, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Associated Press reporters on Monday were unable to reach Diagnes family members in the Austin area or his former wife, who recently was listed as living near San Antonio. A person who answered the door at a house listed for his ex-wife declined to comment and told a reporter to talk with investigators.

The shooting erupted outside Bufords Backyard Beer Garden along Sixth Street, a nightlife destination filled with bars and music clubs close to the University of Texas at Austin.

The gunman drove past the bar that was packed with students before circling back and firing the first shots from his SUV at people on the sidewalk and inside the bar, police said.

Inside the bar and across the street next to a food truck, some students dove for cover while others were motionless, trying to understand what was happening.

The shooting stopped for a moment.

The suspect parked, got out with a rifle and began shooting at others before officers rushed to the intersection and shot him, the police chief said.

University of Texas at Austin President Jim Davis said Sunday that some of those affected included 'members of our Longhorn family.'

The FBI said just hours after the shooting that they found 'indicators' on the gunman and in his vehicle leading them to look into the possibility of terrorism.

This story has been corrected to show Harrington was 19, not 22, and that Shan was 21, not 24, based on revised information from Austin police.

Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.

The distinctive buzz of Iranian-designed drones has become a familiar sound in Ukraine over the past four years. Now, its increasingly heard across the Persian Gulf as Tehran strikes back with the cheap but effective weapons following the attack by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The Shahed drones have made a transformative impact on modern warfare, with Russia sending swarms of the deadly weapons into the skies above Ukraine on nightly missions.

While ballistic and cruise missiles fly much faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Shahed drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars ' a tiny fraction of a ballistic missile.

Available in big numbers, the drones have shown their capability to oversaturate air defenses and inflict painful damage at a very low cost.

The debut in Ukraine

After Russias botched attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital after its full-scale invasion with tanks, troops and missiles in February 2022, the fighting has turned into a war of attrition that has been increasingly shaped by drones.

While swarms of small drones have played a decisive role on the battlefield, both Russia and Ukraine also have increasingly relied on longer-range drones to attack deep into each others territory.

After reaching a deal with Tehran to import Shahed drones early in the war ' Shahed means 'witness' in Farsi ' Russia localized their production. Russian engineers have increased its altitude, made it more jamming-resistant and fitted it with more powerful warheads.

The Russian replica of the Shahed ' called 'Geran,' or 'geranium' ' has been put in production at a plant in the Russian province of Tatarstan that has exponentially increased output. Since then, Russia has battered Ukraine with hundreds of drones in a single night ' more than were used during some entire months in 2024.

By using large numbers in a single attack, Moscows strategists seek to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and distract them from engaging more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often uses alongside the drones to hit high-value targets.

And while it flies slow at 180 kph (just over 110 mph), it can range as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and carry a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives. Ukrainians have dubbed them 'mopeds' for their distinctive buzz.

Ukraine has relied on mobile teams armed with machine guns as a low-cost response to the drones to spare using more-expensive Western-supplied air defense missiles. It also has developed interceptor drones and is working to scale up production, but the steady rise in Russian attacks has strained its defenses.

Attacks in the Gulf and beyond

Following the weekend U.S. and Israeli attacks, Iran has struck Israel and also unleashed a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones on multiple targets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

They included U.S. bases, ports, airports, oil facilities and oil tankers, as well as some high-rise buildings.

Officials in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates said Sunday that air defenses had dealt with 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and more than 540 Iranian drones over two days. While officials said they intercepted all air attacks Saturday, debris from the knocked-down weapons sparked blazes at some of Dubais most iconic locations.

Some Iranian drones flew as far as a U.K. military base in Cyprus. The runway at the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri was struck by an Iranian drone Sunday, according to U.K. officials, and sirens blared there again Monday when two more drones heading toward the base were intercepted.

State-of-the-art U.S. and Israeli air defense assets have proven efficient in intercepting most of Irans ballistic missiles launched at Israel. But the attacks using large numbers of cheap drones hit some softer targets lacking the same level of protection.

Patrick Bury, a professor of security issues at the University of Bath, said drones have transformed warfare, thanks to the combination of 'the persistent surveillance and the high-precision strike' coupled with improved targeting systems and artificial intelligence.

He noted the Shahed drones can be easily hidden in the back of a truck.

'Whats taken people by surprise … is the ferocity and the scale with which Iran has retaliated this time,' compared with its response to the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli attacks, Bury told The Associated Press. 'What the U.S. and the Israelis are hoping, I think, and calculating, that they can degrade that enough to basically then take some of the steam out.'

Many observers noted the U.S. and its allies could tap the experience that Ukraine gained in dealing with Russian drone attacks.

'Our military must do more ASAP to institutionalize defensive lessons from Ukraine,' said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, posting on X.

Jill Lawless in London contributed.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) ' U.S. first lady Melania Trump presided over a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday focusing on children in conflict, one of her signature issues, at a turbulent time as the United States has joined Israel in attacking Iran.

She was the first spouse of a world leader to take the presidents seat at the United Nations’ most powerful body, which is charged with ensuring global peace and security, according to the U.N.

The wife of President Donald Trump was given the opportunity as the United States takes over the council presidency for the month of March. In the past, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have often wielded the gavel.

The first lady arrived at U.N. headquarters in a motorcade and was greeted by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. She shook hands with each of the 15 Security Council members and posed for a group photo.

The rotating president of the council gets to choose the subject and participants for some meetings. Mondays meeting, which was scheduled before the war began on Saturday, is officially titled 'Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict.' The first ladys office said it will 'emphasize educations role in advancing tolerance and world peace.'

Melania Trump will be watched for anything she says, or doesnt say, about the impact on children of the war her husband is waging.

Iranian state media has reported that a girls’ school in southern Iran was hit in an airstrike on Saturday, killing at least 165 people and wounding dozens more. The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in the area. The U.S. military said it was looking into the reports.

Shortly before Monday’s session began, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Amir Saeid Iravani, said it was 'deeply shameful and hypocritical' for the U.S. to convene a meeting on protecting children during conflict while launching airstrikes on Iranian cities.

'For the United States, ‘protecting children and ‘maintaining international peace and security clearly mean something very different from what the U.N. Charter provides,” he told reporters.

The councils last meeting, on Saturday, was a contentious emergency session called in response to the war. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes as violations of international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Irans retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations in the Mideast.

Melania Trump’s support of Ukrainian children

Melania Trump took the unusual step last summer of writing a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin before his summit with her husband and later announced that the effort had led to a group of children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war being reunited with their families.

Putins invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in Russia taking Ukrainian children out of their country so they could be raised as Russian. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lobbied world leaders for help reuniting families.

First lady presides at a time of strained US-UN ties

President Trump has criticized the U.N. and withdrawn the U.S. from major U.N. organizations, including the World Health Organization and the cultural agency UNESCO, while pulling funding from dozens of others. The U.S. also has failed to pay its mandatory dues and owes the United Nations billions of dollars.

This has created a financial crisis at the U.N., with Guterres warning in late January that the world body faced 'imminent financial collapse' unless its financial rules were overhauled or all 193 member nations paid their dues.

Asked if Melania Trumps appearance was a positive sign for U.N.-U.S. relations, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it showed 'the importance that the United States feels towards the Security Council and the subject.'

GENEVA (AP) ' Irans place at the mens World Cup in three months time was put in doubt Monday amid an escalating Middle East conflict sparked by the soccer tournaments co-host the United States.

Iran is due to play its three group stage games in the U.S. ' two in Inglewood, California, then in Seattle ' from June 15-26. Cities in Canada and Mexico also will host some of the 104 games.

The U.S. and Israel have targeted Iran in coordinated attacks since Saturday that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens more senior officials.

It provoked an Iranian response that aimed missiles at U.S. allies including 2022 World Cup host Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which FIFA has picked to stage the 2034 edition.

'What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,' said Irans top soccer official Mehdi Taj, a vice president of the Asian Football Confederation.

It is unclear if the state-backed Iranian soccer federation could refuse to send its team to the 48-nation tournament that starts June 11, or the U.S. government could effectively block the team.

FIFA has declined comment since Saturday, when secretary general Mattias Grafström said it would 'monitor developments around all issues around the world.'

The White Houses top official overseeing World Cup preparations, Andrew Guiliani, seemed unconcerned Saturday in a social media post.

'Well deal with soccer games tomorrow,' Guiliani wrote about Iran, 'tonight, we celebrate their opportunity for freedom.'

Here is a look at the issues in play:

Asian soccer power

Iran has one of the best national teams in Asia and has qualified for six of the past eight World Cups.

It is No. 20 in the FIFA world rankings of 211 teams, and has not been lower than No. 24 since the last World Cup in Qatar.

Iran was among the second-seeded teams in the World Cup draw held in Washington, D.C. in December, minutes after U.S. President Donald Trump was presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.

Though Taj and other Iranian soccer officials were denied visas to enter the U.S., the draw outcome was favorable for Iran, especially in the expanded format where most third-place teams advance to the knockout rounds.

Iran starts against low-ranked New Zealand, then plays one of the weaker top-seeded nations, Belgium, and finishes against Egypt.

Iran is likely to be supported in stadiums by its diaspora in the U.S., though residents of the Middle East nation are subject to a ban on entering the country.

Trumps government has promised exemptions from its travels bans for athletes and coaches arriving for major sports events like the World Cup.

Politics around Iran inside World Cup stadiums is nothing new. Protests over domestic issues were aired by Iran fans at the last World Cup.

The FIFA rules

FIFAs World Cup regulations envisage a team withdrawing, or being excluded, from the tournament though the legal language is vague to say the least.

In that scenario, according to Article 6.7, 'FIFA shall decide on the matter at its sole discretion and take whatever action is deemed necessary.'

'FIFA may decide to replace the Participating Member Association in question with another association,' the rules say.

That legal framing seems to give FIFA president Gianni Infantino wide powers to shape any decision relating to Iran.

Just 18 months ago, the decision announced by Infantino to add Lionel Messis team Inter Miami to the 2025 Club World Cup lineup appeared to have no basis in formal tournament rules.

Consequences of withdrawing

Should Iran pull out of the World Cup ' still hugely speculative ' its soccer federation would forfeit at least $10.5 million.

FIFA pays $9 million in prize money to each of the 16 federations whose teams fail to advance from the group stage, and all 48 qualified teams get $1.5 million 'to cover preparation costs.'

The Iranian federation also would face disciplinary fines from FIFA ' at least 250,000 Swiss francs ($321,000) for withdrawing up to 30 days before the tournament, and at least 500,000 Swiss francs ($642,000) if the decision is in the last month before kickoff.

Iran would risk being excluded by FIFA from qualifying for the next World Cup in 2030 as well.

Next in line

Iran was a fast World Cup qualifier last March, earning one of eight guaranteed places allocated to the Asian Football Confederation.

Should Iran pull out, the likely replacement from Asia should be Iraq or the United Arab Emirates.

Iraq and the UAE were effectively the ninth and 10th-ranked Asian teams through the various qualifying groups and advanced to a two-leg playoff last November.

Iraq won 3-2 on aggregate ' eliminating the UAE ' to advance to the intercontinental playoffs in Mexico and, on March 31, it is scheduled to play an elimination game against Bolivia or Suriname with a World Cup place at stake.

One possible element of uncertainty is the language of the World Cup tournament rules.

FIFA wrote that it can decide to replace a withdrawn team 'with another association,' though without specifying the replacement must come from the same continental confederation.

Precedent of a late replacement

Denmark famously won the 1992 European Championship after getting a late invitation from UEFA, European soccers ruling body.

Yugoslavia won a qualifying group ahead of the Danes but was removed by UEFA less than two weeks before the tournament because of a United Nations sanctions resolution during the widening Balkans conflict.

Teams have previously refused to travel to a World Cup, though not in the modern era.

Just 13 teams instead of 16 took part in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, with India and Scotland among teams declining a place.

As Israel unleashed a sweeping military response to the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas, it aimed punch after punch at the power of Iran, the groups longtime sponsor, and its other proxies and allies in the region.

The result has been a rapid and systematic degradation of Irans clout across the Middle East over the past 2½ years, a seismic change that led directly to this weekends devastating attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel.

'Certainly the Oct. 7 events were a turning point in this long conflict between Iran and Israel,' said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an expert on Iranian politics at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. 'I think it provided Israel with the argument or justification to deliver a strong blow.'

The most devastating hit so far came this weekend when President Donald Trump and Israeli leaders launched a wave of attacks on Iran, killing Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and inflicting widespread destruction. But the war, while still in its early stages, is part of a much longer continuum of events that have severely weakened Iran, Hezbollah and other proxy militias, and upended political balance in the region.

'Its a very bloody, a very violent but transformative moment that the Middle East is going through,' said Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow focused on the Middle East at Chatham House, a British think tank. 'We dont know where this will end up.'

The war in Gaza was the wellspring

The damage to Irans power radiated from the war in Gaza, where Israeli forces followed Hamas after fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages during the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel has since killed more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry, which is under Gazas Hamas government and which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The conflict quickly expanded, though, to include other groups in the Iran-sponsored Axis of Resistance.

In Lebanon, the powerful militant group Hezbollah had long been considered Irans first line of defense in case of a war with Israel. It was believed to have some 150,000 rockets and missiles, and the groups former leader, Hassan Nasrallah once boasted of having 100,000 fighters.

After Oct. 7, the group launched rockets across the border to Israel, seeking to aid its ally Hamas. That drew Israeli airstrikes and shelling and the exchanges escalated into full-scale war in the fall of 2024.

Israel inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah, killing Nasrallah and other top leaders and destroying much of the militant groups arsenal, before a U.S.-negotiated ceasefire nominally halted that conflict last November. Israel continues to occupy parts of southern Lebanon and to carry out near-daily airstrikes.

Hezbollah was further weakened when rebels overthrew the regime of key ally Syrian President Bashar Assad, cutting off a major supply route for Iranian weapons.

Yemens Houthi rebels, also sponsored by Iran, joined the expanding conflict, firing rockets at vessels in the Red Sea and targeting Israel. U.S. warships and the Israeli military returned fire.

Israel left the status quo behind

As the conflict expanded, leaders of Iran and its proxies failed to recognize that Israel had abandoned the long-tense status quo and was trying to engineer a fundamental shift, Mansour said.

The toll on Iran escalated last June when Israel launched a surprise offensive aimed at decimating Tehrans rapidly advancing nuclear program while Iran and the U.S. were in negotiations for a nuclear deal. The 12-day war that followed saw bombing attacks of Irans energy industry and Defense Ministry headquarters.

Irans weakened proxy groups largely stayed on the sidelines as their sponsor came under direct attack last year. So far in the new war, theyve done much the same.

'Its very much about survival' for Hezbollah and the other Iran-backed groups, Mansour said. He noted that over time the Axis had become less driven by top-down orders from Iran, and the groups have become more autonomous. 'And survival to them is based on calculations that arent necessarily about Irans survival.'

Since Israel and the U.S. launched a barrage of strikes on Iran Saturday, Tehrans allies and proxies in the region have had a minimal role in the response.

Hezbollah appeared to change that early Monday, even though the group has been under great pressure by Lebanese officials not to enter the fray in defense of Iran out of fear of another damaging war in Lebanon.

Hezbollah issued statements condemning the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and mourning the death of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Then it hinted it might get involved. Early Monday, it did, firing missiles across the border. Israel promptly retaliated with strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut. It was the first time in more than a year that Hezbollah has claimed a strike against Israel.

Hezbollah said in a statement that the strikes were carried out in retaliation for the killing of Khamenei and for 'repeated Israeli aggressions.'

How might other proxy groups react?

How other proxy groups could react to Khameneis death remains to be seen. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said Israels actions since 2023 may give such groups pause.

'Previous bouts of conflict since Oct. 7 appear to have underlined the existential risk associated with making yourself a target,' Lister said in an email responding to questions from The Associated Press.

In Iraq, a coalition of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed several drone strikes targeting U.S. bases in Irbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the countrys north. The extent of damage caused by the attacks is not clear. But the Kurdish region has seen widespread power outages after a key gas field that supplies much of the regions electricity stopped operations, citing security concerns.

Two officials with different Iran-backed militias in Iraq told the AP that a meeting took place two months ago between Iranian officials and allied Iraqi militias to make plans for a response in case Iran was attacked, including distributing tasks among the Iraqi armed groups.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. One of the officials said it was decided that the response would target U.S. forces and interests in Iraqs semiautonomous northern Kurdish region and in neighboring Jordan.

Theres often a misconception that Iran issues orders to its proxy militant groups and they all fall in line, Boroujerdi said. But independent decisions the groups have made so far to stay clear of the conflict are a sign of the overall weakening of Irans network.

'The dominoes started to fall with the October 7 events,' Boroujerdi said. 'Just take note of everything that has changed since then in terms of the balance of power.'

Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.