Iran Threatens to Destroy Data Centres and AI Facilities in the Gulf
JAKARTA — Iran has threatened to destroy data centres, communications cable networks and artificial intelligence (AI) facilities owned by or linked to US interests in the Persian Gulf if the war escalates again. The threat marks an expansion of Tehran’s strategic targets, from military bases and energy infrastructure to technology facilities that support the international digital economy.
Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, made the threat on Sunday (11 October 2026), as indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran again reached an impasse. The former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specifically referred to valuable US technology assets in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and areas around the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had not previously included on its list of targets.
“We have not included these assets on our list of targets. But if war breaks out, many communications cables, data centres, AI facilities and various other facilities will be destroyed,” Rezaei said, according to Iran’s state broadcaster Press TV on Sunday.
Rezaei said Iran still had military capabilities that it had not fully used in previous confrontations with the United States and Israel. He warned that Tehran would demonstrate these new capabilities if Washington launched further attacks on Iranian territory.
The statement signals a significant shift in Tehran’s strategic calculations. Iran is no longer focusing solely on US military installations in the Middle East, but also on commercial infrastructure that plays a role in cloud computing, data processing, financial systems and AI development.
The threat is conditional on a renewed escalation of the war; it is not an announcement that new attacks on AI facilities have taken place. As of the statement, there was no verified evidence that Iran had begun a new operation to destroy data centres in response to Rezaei’s warning on 11 October.
Amazon Data Centres Previously Hit by Iranian Drones
Rezaei’s threat is not without precedent. In March 2026, several Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre facilities in the UAE and Bahrain were damaged by drone attacks during the conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel.
The Financial Times reported in March 2026 that the attack on AWS facilities was a significant development in modern warfare. For the first time in that conflict, a US technology company’s cloud-computing infrastructure had become the direct target of a military attack.
AWS confirmed on 2 March 2026 that two of its facilities in the UAE had been directly hit by drones. A facility in Bahrain was also damaged by a drone attack near its operational site.
The impact went beyond physical damage to buildings. Disruptions to power supplies, connectivity and cooling systems prevented some cloud-computing services from operating normally, prompting customers to move applications and data to AWS service centres in other regions.
The consequences of the attacks continued for months. In a service-status update on 15 September 2026, AWS said it could not restore access to some resources and data stored only in one of its operational zones in the UAE.
The situation in Bahrain was more serious, as the damage exceeded the region’s service-recovery capabilities. AWS said some data stored only in Bahrain could not be accessed again, although many customers had already moved their operations to other regions.
In a report on 10 May 2026, Germany’s Deutsche Welle described the attacks on AWS facilities as a warning about the vulnerability of digital infrastructure. It said damage to data centres could affect banking transactions, payment systems, public services and economic activity dependent on cloud-computing networks.
The attacks show that a commercial technology facility can have consequences far beyond damage to its buildings. Disruption at a single computing centre serving many customers could spread across multiple economic sectors, particularly when backup systems are unavailable or located at the same facility.