Iran’s IRGC Just Put OpenAI’s $30 Billion Data Center in Its Crosshairs

You don’t see this every day: a state-backed military force publishing a video that names a specific Silicon Valley data center as a potential target.

But that’s exactly what happened on April 3rd, when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dropped a video on an Iranian state news outlet’s X account. The message is blunt: if the US attacks Iran’s power plants, the IRGC will go after “US-linked energy and technology companies” in the region. And to make sure everyone knows what they mean, they show satellite imagery of OpenAI’s in-progress Stargate facility in Abu Dhabi — a $30 billion project that’s part of the company’s broader $500 billion infrastructure play.

Let’s be clear about what’s being threatened here. This isn’t some vague “critical infrastructure” reference. The IRGC video explicitly mentions “complete and utter annihilation” of those targets. That’s not diplomatic language. That’s a threat to blow up a construction site that represents one of the most ambitious AI computing projects ever conceived.

OpenAI’s Stargate project is a massive undertaking backed by Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. The Abu Dhabi facility alone is supposed to eventually house 16 gigawatts of compute power. For context, that’s enough electricity to power several million homes. The October 2025 update said construction was “well underway” and aiming to deploy 200 megawatts this year. We don’t know how much is actually finished, but satellite imagery from the video shows the site is clearly active.

There’s a funny — or maybe just sloppy — detail in the IRGC’s video. They included a photo of the project’s backers but misidentified Cisco’s chief product officer Jeetu Patel as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. It’s a small mistake, but it tells you something about the intelligence quality behind the threat. Then again, the satellite imagery looks real enough, so maybe they’re just bad at facial recognition.

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Over the weekend, President Trump posted on Truth Social that Tuesday would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day” if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. He told ABC News the US plans on “blowing up the entire country” if no deal is reached. Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded on Monday by saying they’re “determined to defend our national security and sovereignty with all might.”

So here’s where we are: the US is threatening to bomb Iranian power plants, Iran is threatening to bomb a US tech company’s data center in the UAE, and OpenAI is stuck in the middle of a geopolitical standoff that has nothing to do with AI.

I’ve been watching the Stargate project since it was announced, and I’ve always been skeptical about the sheer scale. $500 billion is an insane number, even by hyperscaler standards. But I never considered that the biggest risk might not be technical or financial — it might be a missile from the IRGC.

OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment, and honestly, what would they say? “We’re building a data center in a geopolitically volatile region and hoping no one decides to make it a target” isn’t exactly a reassuring statement.

This is the kind of story that makes you rethink where we build critical AI infrastructure. The UAE has been positioning itself as a neutral hub for tech investment, but neutrality only works if everyone agrees to respect it. When the IRGC starts publishing threat videos with your construction site in the background, that agreement is already broken.

I’ll be watching Tuesday closely. “Power Plant Day” might end up being “Data Center Day” instead.