- Iran targets Stargate UAE AI data center
- IRGC Suggests ‘Complete and Complete Annihilation’
- 1GW capacity is planned for the site in the Middle East
As the conflict in the Middle East continues, Iran has threatened to target the $30 billion Stargate AI data center located in the United Arab Emirates – a data center relied on by tech giants including OpenAI, Nvidia, Cisco, Oracle and SoftBank.
The Times of India reports on the threat, which was made clearly and specifically in a video speech by Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) force in Iran.
“Should the United States continue its threats against Iran’s power plant facilities, the following retaliatory measures must be adopted immediately,” Zolfaghari said, identifying “all power plants, energy infrastructure, and information and communications technology of the Zionist regime” as targets.
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These targets will face “complete and utter annihilation,” Zolfaghari continues, before the video switches to a Google Maps image of the Stargate UAE base in the desert – hidden in the standard map view, but visible via night vision.
‘Limited scale computing capacity’
Iran on level They released a video threatening to attack 1GW Stargate AI data center in UAE. The data center is hidden on Google maps, they even showed it pic.twitter.com/LuOGIp3BVj3 April 2026
The Stargate UAE project was announced last year, with OpenAI describing it as representative of “our long-term vision for building cross-border computing capacity around the world for safe, secure and broadly beneficial AGI”.
With strong links to the US government as well, the data center is now very much in the sights of the IRGC and its weapons. The site is planned to offer 1 GW (gigawatt) of power and computing capacity, with the first phase of 200 MW (megawatt) said to incorporate around 10,000 Nvidia chips.
It is not clear exactly how much of the data center is currently operational, but the first phase of 200 MW was scheduled to go live this year before the war in Iran started. That would represent a significant blow to AI technology infrastructure.
The IRGC continues to target targets linked to the United States and to American companies in the Middle East, including Microsoft, Apple, Google and Meta. As the war stretches into another month, Stargate UAE and other critical locations remain under threat.
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