One of the most important AI projects in the world has just been named a potential military target.
Iran’s powerful military arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published a video on April 3 threatening to destroy OpenAI’s flagship Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi if the United States follows through on its threat to bomb Iranian power plants and water desalination facilities.
The footage, shared on a state-backed news outlet’s X account, shows a satellite image of what appears to be an empty desert on Google Maps, before cutting to footage of the sprawling campus, with the message overlaid on the screen: “Nothing stays hidden to our sight, though hidden by Google.”
The threat came from Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an IRGC spokesperson, who addressed the US directly.
“Should the USA proceed with its threats concerning Iran’s power plant facilities the following retaliatory measures shall be promptly enacted,” he said in the video. “All power plants, energy infrastructure, and information and communications technology of the Zionist regime, and all similar companies within the region that have American shareholders shall face complete and utter annihilation.”
This marks a significant escalation in Iran’s posture. Just days before the video dropped, the IRGC had listed 18 American tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla, as legitimate military targets. But it had stopped short of naming any specific facility. The Stargate video is the first time it has done so.
Why Stargate matters
To understand why this is such a massive deal, you have to look at the numbers. Stargate isn’t just another data center; it’s a $500 billion joint venture involving OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. The specific site in Abu Dhabi represents a $30 billion investment designed to house 500,000 Nvidia GPUs.
The facility is meant to be the heart of AI development outside of US soil. However, the IRGC’s video suggests they aren’t just watching the construction, they’re looking for weaknesses.
The ongoing conflict has already impacted digital infrastructure across the Gulf region. Iranian missile strikes have hit data centers in the region, including AWS facilities in Bahrain and an Oracle data center in Dubai. These incidents disrupted services across banking, ride-hailing, and payment systems, a sign that modern warfare is increasingly extending into cloud infrastructure.
Trump’s ‘Power Plant Day’
The backdrop to all of this is a rapidly deteriorating exchange between Washington and Tehran.
President Donald Trump has threatened to strike Iranian civilian infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping lane for the world’s economy — isn’t reopened by the end of Tuesday.
On Truth Social, Trump dubbed the upcoming deadline “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day.” He later doubled down in an interview with ABC News, stating the US plans on “blowing up the entire country” if a deal isn’t reached.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded on Monday, saying the country is “determined to defend our national security and sovereignty with all might.”
The IRGC’s threat against Stargate is framed as conditional, retaliation for a US strike on Iranian civilian infrastructure, rather than an imminent action. But with neither side showing signs of backing down, the gap between conditional and imminent is narrowing fast.
Also read: OpenAI’s new $122 billion funding round shows the scale of capital now flowing into AI infrastructure as the company pushes toward an $852 billion valuation.