Iran Signals Strikes On Middle East AI Hubs, Names Abu Dhabi Facility

Iran warned it may target artificial intelligence cloud facilities across the Middle East after saying it would respond to U.S. threats and strikes on Iranian infrastructure, according to a military statement and a circulated video that singled out the Stargate complex in the United Arab Emirates. The message, released late last week and amplified on social platforms over the weekend, accused U.S. forces of endangering civilian systems and said Tehran would answer by attacking American energy and technology assets in the region if pressure continues.

The short clip shown by Iranian officials opens with a view of the globe and then narrows to the Abu Dhabi site tied to the Stargate project, accompanied by an on-screen claim that the center is within Iranian observation. Stargate, announced in January 2025 as a multi-billion-dollar venture involving OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, aims to build large-scale compute infrastructure for AI workloads. The project has struggled with financing and import tariffs and has talked about launching additional facilities abroad.

The warning follows an ultimatum from President Trump to Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for global shipping, and his declaration that U.S. forces could strike Iranian civilian installations such as power and desalination plants. The region has already seen missile hits on cloud infrastructure: Iranian strikes have been blamed for outages at two major commercial cloud locations, including Amazon Web Services equipment in Bahrain and an Oracle facility in Dubai.

Security analysts warn the dispute could spill over into broader service disruptions for businesses and consumers. “If compute hubs become targets, local internet users and companies that depend on cloud-hosted applications could see prolonged outages,” said a cybersecurity researcher at a Washington think tank who agreed to speak on background. They added that redundancies in cloud design reduce risk, but cross-border attacks can still break failover plans.

Industry sources say cloud providers and their corporate customers are assessing contingency steps, moving workloads where possible and increasing encryption and monitoring. But smaller firms in the Gulf, which rely heavily on a handful of regional centers for storage and processing, may have limited options if physical facilities are damaged.

Diplomats and tech executives say the situation remains volatile and could escalate quickly. For now, companies operating in the region are watching military and political developments closely while regulators and local internet operators prepare for possible disruption to services that underpin commerce and daily life.