Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has issued a very public and direct warning to the U.S., stating that any damage inflicted on Iran’s power infrastructure will trigger decisive retaliation. Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an IRGC spokesperson, specifically threatened the “complete and utter annihilation” of U.S. and Israeli facilities in the region, as reported by Tom’s Hardware. The $30 billion Stargate AI datacenter in Abu Dhabi was singled out as a prime target for Iranian destruction later in their video message.
These threats follow reports of Iran already inflicting enough damage via rocket strikes on some Amazon AWS data centers to shut them down. Zolfaghari made these headlining threats against U.S. action in Iran very clear for everyone to hear. He declared that should the USA “proceed with its threats concerning Iran’s power plant facilities the following retaliatory measures shall be promptly enacted.”
He wasn’t shy about the scope, continuing, “All power plants, energy infrastructure, and information and communications technology of the Zionist regime, and all similar companies within the region that have American shareholders shall face complete and utter annihilation.”
The video accompanying Zolfaghari’s remarks then got even more specific
The video switched to a shot of Earth from space, zooming right into Abu Dhabi on Google Maps. The camera centered on an apparently ’empty’ patch of desert not far from the coast, which you might think was just barren land. However, a message overlaid on this bleak view stated, “Nothing stays hidden to our sight, though hidden by Google.” Immediately after, the video transitioned to a ‘night vision’ view of that exact same area on the map, and suddenly, the full extent of the Stargate AI datacenter in Abu Dhabi was crystal clear to see.
Iran has already demonstrated a capability to disrupt significant tech infrastructure in the region. Iranian strikes on AWS data centers in Bahrain and Dubai have previously caused major service disruptions. The company internally declared multiple zones in the region to have “hard down” status, meaning those affected areas were completely unavailable. AWS even issued an internal memo stating that operations in the two data centers had been disrupted and that it was working diligently to migrate affected clients’ workloads to other regions.
The IRGC has been conducting these strikes against AWS sites in the Middle East since the war began in early March, showing a sustained pattern of targeting. An internal memo from AWS communicated the severity of the situation, noting that “These two regions continue to be impaired, and services should not expect to be operating with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency.”
It also highlighted the company’s efforts to free up capacity, stating, “We are actively working to free and reserve as much capacity as possible in the region for customers, and services should be scaled to the minimal footprint required to support customer migration.”
The AWS sites in the Middle East each feature three compute zones, and both data centers reported some zones as “hard down” and others as “impaired but functioning.” More importantly, the company’s internal communications revealed, “We do not have a timeline for when DXB and BAH will return to normal operations.”
Amazon isn’t the only tech giant caught in the crosshairs of this escalating conflict. Iran has also issued threats against Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Google, alongside 14 other U.S. tech companies over recent weeks. These threats started as early as the second week of March, following the alleged targeting of a Tehran bank that resulted in several employee deaths. Iran reiterated these warnings at the start of April and even followed through with a strike on an Oracle data center later that same week.
So, one might ask, is this just a bluff, or are we looking at a serious potential for escalation? Given that Iran has already managed to inflict enough damage to disrupt operations at some Amazon AWS data centers, it’s hard to dismiss these threats as mere posturing. Perhaps those were “lucky” shots, as some might suggest, that managed to bypass the robust defenses deployed in the Gulf States.
However, the consistent targeting of major tech infrastructure indicates a deliberate strategy. With neither side showing any sign of cooling down the rhetoric or throttling back on the use of force right now, we might unfortunately find out very soon whether Iran can indeed mount a devastating attack on U.S. business-related data centers.
Published: Apr 6, 2026 05:15 pm