The Iranian Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published on the X platform a list of about 30 locations of Western technology giants in the Middle East, explicitly labeling them as “hostile technological infrastructure” and suggesting that they could become further targets of attacks. Iran intends to destroy all Big Tech infrastructure in the Middle East, which may seriously affect the entire ecosystem of Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Big Tech and AI in Iran’s crosshairs?
The assets of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, NVIDIA, IBM and Palantir, which are located in nearly 30 locations in the region, were targeted. Most of the identified facilities were selected for their role in developing artificial intelligence systems or coordinating cloud services in the Middle East. There is a particular concentration of targets in Dubai and Tel Aviv, where the list includes, among others: Palantir’s main office, Amazon and Microsoft branches, as well as NVIDIA’s engineering and development center.
It is worth noting that these are not just idle threats. Iran on March 1 attacked two Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates, and a third in Bahrain was damaged by debris from the nearby attack site. The IRGC officially claimed responsibility for these activities, saying they were intended to “identify the role of these centers in supporting hostile military and intelligence operations.” Interestingly, the impact on AWS data centers coincided with a serious outage in Claude from Anthropic, which many Internet users associated with the attacks.
Four Oracle, IBM and Google offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi were singled out for allegedly providing infrastructure to “military entities.” The grounds for such allegations are serious because Amazon and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) won a contract worth USD 1.2 billion from the Israeli government in 2021 as part of Project Nimbus, providing Israel with “basic technological infrastructure.”
According to a 2025 report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, these same companies, along with Microsoft, provide Israel with “near-government access to its cloud and AI technologies.”
Big Tech directly involved in the war in Iran?
The Albanese report goes even further: IBM would train Israeli military and intelligence personnel, and Palantir would provide predictive technology to generate target lists in Palestine. Oracle is not listed in the UN report, but according to The Middle East Monitor, its executives actively promoted “love of Israel” in American culture. If that wasn’t enough, the U.S. Department of War just awarded Oracle an $88 million contract to integrate cloud software with Air Force infrastructure.
With tensions rising between Tehran and Washington, the line between commercial and military infrastructure is becoming more fluid and more dangerous.
