Intel has become the first major American technology company to respond after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened attacks on 18 US firms operating in the Middle Eastern region. The Guards said the US had “ignored our repeated warnings about the need to stop terrorist operations”, and that the companies’ offices are now a “legitimate target”.“The safety and wellbeing of our team is our number one priority. We are taking steps to safeguard and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation,” CNBC quoted an Intel spokesperson as saying.
Why Iran threatened to attack US tech companies
On Tuesday (March 31), the Revolutionary Guard posted a warning on a Guard-affiliated Telegram channel, declaring 18 US tech companies to be “legitimate targets” due to their involvement in American and Israeli strikes on Iranian soil.“From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed,” the post read. The Guard set a stark deadline: attacks would begin at 8:00 pm Tehran time on Wednesday, April 1 (10:30 pm) and employees at those companies have been warned to immediately vacate their workplaces to protect their lives.
Which US tech companies are on the ‘list’
Iran aims to target some of the biggest names in American business:Tech giants: Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Dell, Palantir and BoeingBeyond tech: JPMorgan, Tesla, GE and UAE-based AI firm G42, along with defence technology company Spire SolutionsIn early March, Iranian operatives struck Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the Middle East, triggering widespread outages across apps and digital services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).The region has become one of the hottest destinations for American technology investment, particularly around artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Countries across the Gulf offer a powerful combination of cheap energy, vast open land and wealth that makes building large-scale data centres and AI facilities highly attractive.
