Iran's Revolutionary Guard threatens 'annihilation' of OpenAI's $30 billion Abu Dhabi data center

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has issued a video threat targeting OpenAI's flagship Stargate AI campus in Abu Dhabi, warning of "complete and utter annihilation" if the United States attacks Iranian civilian infrastructure. The video, released April 3, 2026 by Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, opens with satellite imagery of the desert facility before switching to night-vision footage of the sprawling Stargate campus. The on-screen message reads: "Nothing stays hidden to our sight, though hidden by Google." The threat marks the first time the IRGC has designated a specific facility for destruction. The Guard had previously named 18 U.S. technology companies as legitimate military targets, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Zolfaghari stated the attack would be carried out if the U.S. follows through on President Donald Trump's threatened strikes against Iranian power plants and desalination facilities. The conditional threat comes amid a month of escalating conflict that began with a U.S.-Israel joint campaign February 28, prompting Iranian retaliatory strikes against Gulf energy infrastructure and commercial data centers. Stargate UAE represents the international flagship of the $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi sovereign investment vehicle MGX. The 19-square-kilometer campus south of Abu Dhabi is being built by UAE-based G42. The facility's first phase, a 200-megawatt compute cluster using Nvidia Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, is scheduled to come online by year-end. At full capacity, the campus is designed to reach 1 gigawatt with a projected total construction cost exceeding $30 billion.