Fateme Mohajerani, a spokesperson for the government, stated on a recent TV broadcast that the internet speed reduction is “temporary, targeted, and controlled, intended to combat cyberattacks,” according to a machine translation.

This announcement follows the intensifying conflict between Iran and Israel that began after Israel’s attack on June 12th, alongside an increase in reported internet disruptions. Citizens report difficulties accessing essential communication tools like messaging apps and maps, and sometimes even any internet service at all. According to Cloudflare, two prominent Iranian mobile networks were nearly offline on Tuesday. Additionally, The New York Times mentions that Iranians are finding it increasingly difficult to use VPNs, commonly utilized to bypass bans on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Furthermore, the Iranian government is urging citizens to delete WhatsApp – one of the country’s most popular messaging platforms – claiming without any evidence that the Meta-owned app has been weaponized by Israel to spy on its users. (WhatsApp vehemently denied those claims in a statement to the Associated Press.) Other reports indicate that Telegram, another messaging app popular in Iran, has been blocked as well.

Israel’s role in the cyber outages has not been officially confirmed, but independent analysts at NetBlocks noticed a significant reduction of internet traffic originating from Iran on Tuesday, starting at 5:30 PM local time. According to Tasnim, a news network affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iranians will still have access to the country’s state-operated national internet service, though two Iranian officials told the Times that the internal bandwidth could be reduced by up to 80 percent.

Israel has experienced a 700 percent increase in cyberattacks since June 12th, according to the cybersecurity firm Radware, which attributes this to Iran’s own sophisticated state-sponsored hacking operations. National security experts also warn that American companies may experience “spillover” from continued cyberwarfare, and that if the United States intervenes in the military conflict, Iranian hackers could begin attacking critical US infrastructure in retaliation.