Iran has reportedly designated Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Palantir facilities as legitimate targets of retaliatory strikes, according to an Al Jazeera report citing Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim news agency.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has pinpointed 29 locations in Bahrain, Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates that house offices, datacenters, and research facilities that Iran has set its sights on destroying, according to Tasnim’s Telegram channel.
This comes a week after Iran said it deliberately targeted three AWS datacenters in the region.
The list was presented under the title “Iran’s New Targets.” It included five Amazon facilities, five Microsoft, six IBM, three Palantir, four Google, three Nvidia, and three Oracle buildings.
Iran state media telegram messages threatening US companies – Click to enlarge
Iran state media telegram messages against US companies – Click to enlarge
Iran state media telegram messages threatening Amazon and others – Click to enlarge
The targets, described as the “enemy’s technology infrastructure,” were presented in three slides on Telegram and included the name of the vendor, the nature of the facility, the location, as well as a brief description of their work.
“As the regional conflict expands into infrastructure warfare, Iran’s legitimate targets are gradually expanding,” the Tasnim post stated.
Iran is vowing to target a mix of research and development facilities, including Google’s regional Dubai office handling advertising and search operations and its Qatar office for cloud support services, Nvidia’s “main and largest R&D center” in Haifa, IBM’s AI research and threat response in Be’er Sheva, Palantir’s strategic collaboration center in Abu Dhabi and its regional office in Tel Aviv, Oracle’s regional cloud service office in Jerusalem and its main office in Abu Dhabi, Amazon offices in Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as more of AWS’ datacenters.
Hours later, a spokesperson for Khatam al-Anbiya, Iran’s central military command, stated via Tasnim’s Telegram channel that Americans should expect “our painful response.”
“Last night the American terrorist army and the brutal Zionist regime targeted one of the country’s banks after failing in their military objectives,” the spokesperson said in a message viewed by The Register. “With this illegitimate and unconventional action in war, the enemy left our hands open to targeting economic centers and banks belonging to the United States and the Zionist regime in the region.”
The post also warned that people should stay one kilometer away from banks in Israel.
Iran has already conducted aerial attacks against three AWS datacenters in the Middle East: one in Bahrain and two in the UAE. Iran cited Amazon’s support for US military operations as justification for the strikes.
The attack knocked numerous cloud providers in the region offline, and prompted Snowflake, Red Hat, and IoT platform EMQX to urge customers to open their disaster recovery playbook and move to new bit barns. ®