Navigational signals were scrambled over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area on Thursday as Israel braced for a potential Iranian attack on the country’s economic center.
Traffic was delayed, food delivery was disrupted and transportation applications showed Tel Aviv residents to be in Beirut, Lebanon. The measures appeared to be taken by Israeli officials to disrupt GPS-navigated drones or missiles that Iran or its proxies might fire at the country.
Tensions have soared since Monday, when a strike on a Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria killed senior Iranian military officials. Iran blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate, though it was unclear whether it would do so directly or via the militias it funds across the Middle East.
A direct Iranian strike on an Israeli city would be a first and mark a major escalation of hostilities and risk widening the conflict into a regional war.
“We have good intelligence and good early warnings,” Amos Yadlin, a former director of Israeli military intelligence, said at a briefing for foreign journalists in Israel on Thursday. “But it may come, so be tuned.”
Israel hasn’t issued new security directives to its citizens since the Damascus strike, but the military paused leave for all combat units and bolstered manpower in its air defense units.