Iran has declared Google, Amazon and Microsoft “legitimate targets” for attack, publishing a hit list of tech company offices and data centres in the Middle East.
The Iranian Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday said Tehran was preparing to pursue “enemy technology infrastructure”.
In a Telegram post, Tasnim listed 29 offices, data centres and research hubs owned by the seven companies in Qatar, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
It also named the US tech companies Nvidia, Palantir, IBM and Oracle as targets for attack.
“As the regional war expands into an infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets gradually broadens,” Tasnim said in a post titled “Iran’s new targets”.
The locations listed include not just data centres but advertising sales offices and research centres in busy cities.
The companies have not yet said if they have taken steps to protect staff, close offices or otherwise respond to the threat. Amazon evacuated employees from a damaged data centre last week.
Iran also threatened to attack banks and other financial institutions on Wednesday, saying that people should stay outside a one-kilometre radius.
Many of the tech companies named by Iran have significant operations in the Middle East, including several regional data centres, as governments and businesses demand local data storage, as well as major operations in Israel, a cybersecurity hub.
Nvidia has around 5,000 staff in Israel and spent $7bn (£5.2bn) acquiring the Israeli start-up Mellanox in 2019. Google has a Doha data centre region, and Microsoft has said it plans to open a data centre in Saudi Arabia by the end of the year.
Last week’s attacks against Amazon are believed to be the first military attacks against a US tech company’s data centres.
The actions threaten to affect the UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s dreams of capitalising on cheap energy and plentiful land to become major players in AI infrastructure.
Tech companies and Gulf states had outlined plans for major data centre investments in recent years, as the region’s governments seek to move beyond oil and curry favour with the US, which is racing against China to develop powerful artificial intelligence systems.
Data centres are typically large and sensitive to disruption, making them vulnerable targets for attack.
Microsoft did not comment. IBM, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Oracle and Palantir were contacted for comment.
Amazon is reviewing how its engineers deploy AI-assisted tools after a series of outages disrupted its retail website, reportedly locking customers out of checkout and key account features.
IRAN WAR – BIG UPDATE – from financial expert Robert Kiyosaki.
Israel struck a bank branch in Tehran. Iran called it an “illegitimate and unusual act in war.”
And then Iran changed the rules of this entire conflict.
The IRGC announced: “The enemy has left our hands open to targeting economic centers and banks belonging to the United States and Israel in the region.”
Then Tasnim published a list. Three slides on Telegram. Approximately 30 targets. Named. Located. Described.
– Google’s Dubai office and Qatar cloud center.
– Amazon’s offices in Tel Aviv and Haifa — plus more AWS data centers.
– Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, IBM, Palantir — offices across Israel and Gulf states.
Iran called them “enemy technology infrastructure.”
Then added: “As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands.”
Let me explain why this is a completely different kind of threat.
When missiles hit military bases, soldiers expect that. That’s the known risk of war.
But when you’re an engineer at a Google office in Dubai, sitting at your desk writing code, you didn’t sign up for war.
That randomness is the entire point.
War doesn’t win by killing soldiers. It wins by making ordinary people feel like nowhere is safe.
It wins when companies evacuate staff.
When talent refuses to relocate. When billions in AI infrastructure investment starts looking for the exit.
Iran understands this perfectly.
And the financial damage has already started.
AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain were already struck in earlier Iranian attacks, taking banking, payments and enterprise services offline.
Here’s the detail that should terrify every CFO in the region: standard insurance policies do not cover losses from war or military action.
Every dollar of damage, uninsured. Think about what’s actually at stake.
– Microsoft committed $15 billion to UAE infrastructure by 2029.
– Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco are all part of OpenAI’s Stargate AI campus in the UAE — a 10-square-mile, 5-gigawatt facility.
– Saudi Arabia’s Humain is pouring billions more into regional AI buildouts.
This is where the next decade of AI gets built.
Iran just declared it a war zone.
Iran also warned civilians to “not be within one kilometer of banks” across the region.
This statement is designed to empty offices. To make every person working near a bank or a tech campus question whether they should show up tomorrow.
That uncertainty is the weapon.
I’ve been watching this war for 12 days. It started with missiles and fighter jets. Now it’s targeting the cloud infrastructure that runs the global economy. The battlefield keeps expanding.
According to the spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military headquarters, a bank in Tehran was struck by a missile attack in the early hours of Wednesday, March 11.
The spokesperson described the attack, which struck a branch of Bank Sepah on Haghani Street in Tehran, as “illegitimate and unconventional.” He emphasized that this action by Israel and the United States has given the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) a “free hand” to target economic centers and banks belonging to the U.S. and Israel within the region.
In response, the IRGC warned of possible retaliatory actions and advised people in the region to avoid areas around banks, urging them to stay at least one kilometer away from bank branches and central headquarters in their respective countries.
Since yesterday, reports have circulated regarding disruptions in online services and ATMs for both Bank Sepah and Bank Melli.
Domestic media outlets denied that these systems were hacked, instead attributing the downtime to a “system switch” within the branches.
However, the missile strike on that particular branch does not appear to be directly connected to the widespread outages reported the previous day, since damage to a single location would normally not cause disruptions across an entire banking network.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 