Iran threatens to start attacking major US technology companies on April 1

The Islamic Revolution in Iran Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Tuesday that it plans to begin attacking more than a dozen American companies across the Middle East on Wednesday in response to the killing of Iranian citizens in Iran. The ongoing war with the United States and Israel. The list of companies includes Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Tesla, and Boeing, which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard accused of enabling US military targeting operations. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard urged employees of American companies to evacuate and civilians in the area to stay away.

Tuesday’s warning, posted on the IRGC’s Telegram channel, is an extension of Iran’s campaign of threats against US commercial infrastructure since the US and Israel launched their first attack on Tehran on February 28. Iranian drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers and damaged another in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on March 1, in the first publicly confirmed attack on large-scale American-owned cloud infrastructure. Banking locations, payment processors and customer services across the region It crashed Redundancy operations aimed at preventing power outages have been cancelled.

Earlier this month, the IRGC’s Tasnim News Agency published a list of 29 regional offices and data centers run by major companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Nvidia and Palantir, accusing the companies of supporting US military and intelligence activities.

The IRGC said in its Telegram post that the targeted companies “should expect” the attacks to begin after 8 p.m. on April 1 in Tehran.

Most of the companies mentioned by the IRGC in the Telegram post on Tuesday did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Google, Microsoft, and JPMorgan declined to comment.

There are billions of dollars of American technology and infrastructure tied to the Gulf region, with American technology giants betting big on the region becoming the next center for artificial intelligence development.

The IRGC classifies civilian hardware and software providers as “legitimate targets” responsible for providing the technology that enabled the joint US-Israeli attacks that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the war. The threats highlight the US Department of Defense’s reliance on commercial vendors with operations in the region. For example, Palantir is building the data structure for Project Maven, a Pentagon artificial intelligence program that processes drone and satellite imagery to identify targets for airstrikes. The defense contractor also maintains a corporate office in Abu Dhabi.

The US military responded throughout March by bombing IRGC drone networks needed to carry out attacks, and US Central Command recently released footage of airstrikes that destroyed mobile launchers. But the air campaign has slowed in recent days, as has the United States temporarily Stopped strikes On Iran’s energy infrastructure to explore possible peace talks with Tehran. Amidst the changing pace of operations, the Pentagon is doing just that It is said to look And whether it will deploy up to 10,000 additional troops in the Middle East to expand its options before a possible ground invasion.

In the month following Khamenei’s assassination, nearly 2,000 Iranians were killed, along with at least 13 American service members. The conflict has spread across the region, with Iranian retaliatory strikes hitting targets in Israel, the Gulf states and Iraq. The Strait of Hormuz, an essential shipping route running between Iran, the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman, has been effectively closed for weeks due to threats from Iran. Disrupting shipments of oil and other commodities Worldwide.

Additional reporting by Dana Alomar and Carla Certain.