Initial strikes on major American tech companies were reported following Iran’s threat: The naval command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday it had struck an Oracle data center in Dubai and an Amazon facility in Bahrain, after warning that such sites would be targeted in response to assassinations in Iran. Overnight, Iranian attacks in the Gulf continued, including a strike on a refinery in Kuwait.
The Revolutionary Guard said Friday that the attack on Oracle’s data center and computing infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates was carried out in response to an attempted assassination in Tehran of former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, 81. It said the strike on Amazon was in response to the killing of Mohammad Ali Fathali Zadeh, commander of the Basij-affiliated Fatehin special missions unit. “Amazon’s data center in Bahrain was attacked and destroyed. According to the company itself, they are preparing to leave the region,” the Guard said.
Kharrazi, who heads Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, was wounded in the attack, and his wife was killed. The New York Times reported that he is considered a moderate figure and a respected voice in the regime’s foreign policy establishment. Iranian state media said he had overseen contacts with Pakistani officials aimed at arranging a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, intended to help end the war. In Iran, the attack on him was described as “an attempt to derail diplomacy.”
In the threat issued Tuesday, the Revolutionary Guard called on employees of the targeted companies to evacuate their workplaces “to save their lives,” and issued a similar warning to residents living near tech company offices across the Middle East. In response, a White House official said the United States was prepared. “The U.S. military is ready to thwart any attack, as demonstrated by a 90 percent drop in ballistic missile and drone launches by the terror regime,” the official said.
In the full statement, Iran said that “because the primary component in planning and tracking assassination targets involves American information technology, communications and artificial intelligence companies, from now on those companies will be considered legitimate targets. We recommend that employees of these entities leave their workplaces immediately to save their lives.”
“Residents in the vicinity of those companies, in all countries in the region, should also leave their locations within a radius of one kilometer and move to a safe place,” the statement warned. “Companies actively participating in terror programs will be subject to retaliation. Starting at 20:00 on Wednesday Tehran time, their facilities will be subject to attack in response to any assassination inside Iran.”
The threat included a list of 18 companies, including Oracle, Cisco, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Nvidia, JPMorgan, G42, Tesla, GE, Boeing and Spire Solution. Amazon did not appear on the published list.