Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Tuesday, March 31, that it intended to strike major American technology companies across the Middle East, including Apple, Microsoft and Google, amid the ongoing war.
In a statement published by the official Sepah News agency, the military arm named 18 companies that it said had been involved in planning and tracking targets for American strikes.
The list included Meta, Nvidia, Oracle, Tesla, HP, Intel and IBM, among others. The only non-American company on it appears to have been the UAE’s G42, an artificial-intelligence firm.
The IRGC urged employees of those companies to leave their workplaces immediately, saying the attacks would begin on Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. local time.
Iran had previously identified American technology companies as potential targets in the conflict. In early March, Iranian drones struck several Amazon data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing damage.
As technology companies and the infrastructure around them increasingly come under attack, concern is growing over the scale of artificial-intelligence investment in the region.
Countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia have attracted substantial AI investment in recent years, particularly as Donald Trump has sought to deepen partnerships with the Middle East as part of America’s technological rivalry with China.