Iran Just Threatenened OpenAI’s $30B Stargate Data Center in Abu Dhabi

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps just dropped a video threatening to blow up OpenAI’s partially built $30 billion Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi. The threat is conditional: if the US attacks Iranian power plants, the IRGC says it will carry out the “complete and utter annihilation” of US-linked energy and tech companies in the region.

The video, posted to an Iranian state-backed news outlet’s X account on April 3rd, shows what appears to be satellite imagery from Google Maps of the Stargate facility under construction in the UAE. It also flashes photos of the project’s backers — though they hilariously misidentify Cisco’s chief product officer Jeetu Patel as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Not exactly a sign of top-tier intelligence work.

This is the same Stargate project that OpenAI announced with a $500 billion price tag, backed by Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. The Abu Dhabi facility alone is supposed to house 16 gigawatts of compute power. An October 2025 update said construction was “well underway” and targeting 200 megawatts of deployment in 2026. We don’t know how much is actually finished, but it’s clearly far enough along to show up on satellite imagery.

The timing isn’t random. Over the weekend, President Trump threatened Iran on Truth Social, saying Tuesday would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day” if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. He also told ABC News the US plans on “blowing up the entire country” if no deal is reached. Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded by saying it’s “determined to defend our national security and sovereignty with all might.”

So now we have a direct threat against one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects ever conceived. The Stargate facility isn’t just some random server farm — it’s supposed to be a cornerstone of OpenAI’s compute capacity for the next generation of models. If this thing gets taken out before it even goes live, that’s a massive setback not just for OpenAI but for the entire AI industry that’s been banking on these massive data center builds.

I’ve been watching the Stargate project since it was announced, and honestly, I never thought geopolitical tensions would escalate to the point where a data center becomes a military target. But here we are. The UAE sits right across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, and the US has a significant military presence in the region. If things go hot, that facility is in a very bad neighborhood.

OpenAI hasn’t commented on the threat yet. I’m guessing they’re scrambling to assess the situation. The irony is that this project was supposed to be about securing AI compute capacity away from potential disruptions — building in the UAE was partly about diversifying away from US-centric infrastructure. Now it might be the most exposed facility they have.

This is the kind of story that makes you realize how quickly the AI arms race gets entangled with real-world geopolitics. We’re not just talking about chips and models anymore. We’re talking about billion-dollar infrastructure that could be reduced to rubble by a single missile strike. And the IRGC just made it very clear that they’re willing to go there.