Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has labeled recent U.S. and Israeli military operations \"terrorist\" and warned it will target global ICT and AI companies that cooperated with those strikes.
On the 31st (local time), Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported the IRGC said in a statement that U.S. ICT and AI firms that design and track purported terror targets were behind attacks that killed Iranian citizens. The IRGC said repeated warnings had been ignored and declared that major institutions involved in such operations would be considered lawful strike targets.
The IRGC named 18 companies as potential retaliation targets, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Intel Corporation, HP, Oracle Corporation, IBM, Dell, NVIDIA, Palantir, Cisco, Boeing, Tesla, GE, J.P. Morgan, G42, and Spire Solutions.
The IRGC warned those firms to brace for the destruction of related facilities in Iran in response to any terrorist acts occurring from 8:00 p.m. Tehran time on April 1 (1:30 a.m. KST on April 2). It urged employees to leave company sites immediately and warned residents living within 1 kilometer of those locations to evacuate.
In a separate statement, the Iranian military said it launched drone strikes early that morning near Ben Gurion Airport and against Siemens and AT&T communications and industrial centres in Haifa, saying the moves were retaliation for Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure.
The statement said Siemens' industrial software center uses advanced technologies, including AI and industrial automation, to optimize Israeli weapons production lines and design military systems. It added that AT&T's communications center in Haifa serves as a hub for advanced networking, cloud computing and AI capabilities that support the Israeli military.
