Iran time zone and location activated on some phones in Middle East

If you are in the Middle East and recently noticed that your smartphone switched its location and time zone to Iran, you are not alone.

Unlike most time zones, Iran has a half-hour offset instead of the usual full-hour offset. Iran Standard Time is three and a half hours after UTC.

“My phone’s time zone in Abu Dhabi suddenly switched to Tehran time,” UAE resident Gia Chaudry, who recently graduated with a master's in journalism from Boston University, told The National. “I’ve since spoken to others who experienced the same thing.”

And it's not only phones: According to maritime insights and data provider Windward, “approximately 970 ships per day have experienced Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) jamming in the Arabian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz over the past four days”.

GPS jamming disrupts signals sent by navigation and location-based systems with the aim of allowing a country or group to gain a strategic advantage militarily.

Reddit and various Facebook groups are filled with inquiries about what was causing mobile phones to display inaccurate time zones.

“Did it happen to anyone else? It automatically detected time based on location option selected and it shows Iran's time zone for some reason,” wrote a Reddit user in Bahrain. Comments under the post mentioned location or GPS jamming amid strikes between Israel and Iran might be to blame.

Several Snapchat users in the UAE also told The National they had noticed their devices switching to Tehran time.

Some users have even pointed to map apps indicating they're in Tehran, when in reality they're elsewhere, adding to the uncertainty.

The location discrepancies seem to be agnostic when it comes to various smartphone platforms, wireless providers and apps.

“It could be international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catchers interfering with 4G with the wrong time zone … hackers doing funny things with Wi-Fi, and so on,” said Robert Graham, chief executive of Atlanta-based cyber security company Errata Security, cautioning against assuming military operations were the cause.

“You'd have to point to clear evidence, such as pulling up Google maps and recording the exact location,” he explained, though he didn't rule out any particular reasons for the glitch. As a techy, the first thing I do is check other things.”

Mr Graham added that it might also be related to a bigger problem that mobile phone carriers are having.

After realising how widespread the situation was, Ms Chaudry began to do her own digging on the topic. She asked Hoda Al Khzaimi, director emeritus of the centre of Cyber Security at New York University Abu Dhabi about the continuing location discrepancies that started at the beginning of the Israel's attacks on Iran.

“Given the continuing digital friction between regional actors, it’s not implausible that this incident may be part of a broader campaign to test thresholds, observe behavioural response patterns, or probe infrastructure vulnerabilities,” she said.

“However, without corroborated forensic evidence, this remains speculative.”

Prof Al Khzaimi added that a “backend telecom misconfiguration” might also be causing the continuing problem, but didn't rule out that the discrepancy was the result of Iranian or Israeli cyber efforts to gain the upper hand.

“If patterns persist or scale, more systemic vulnerabilities might be at play, especially at the intersection of mobile network infrastructure and geopolitical cyber activity,” she added.