Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has claimed that it targeted an Oracle data center in Dubai on Thursday as part of its retaliatory campaign against US and Israeli forces operating in West Asia. The IRGC made the claim through state-run news agency IRNA and also posted a statement on social media platform X. Dubai authorities were quick to push back. The Dubai Media Office called the reports "fabricated and incorrect" and dismissed them as fake news.
The IRGC framed the operation as retaliation for a US-Israeli strike on April 1 that killed the wife of former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and left him seriously injured at their home in Tehran. In its statement the IRGC said it struck data centers of two American tech companies, Oracle in Dubai and Amazon in Bahrain, warning that further strikes would follow if the aggression continued.
Bahrain's interior ministry confirmed a fire at a company facility following Iranian attacks but did not name Amazon directly. Amazon's cloud division AWS has not officially confirmed whether its Bahrain infrastructure was among the affected sites. Oracle has also not issued any public statement on the matter.
No independent verification of the alleged Oracle strike has emerged. The UAE has been one of the most impacted countries in the wider regional conflict. Emirati forces have intercepted 414 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,914 drones since the US-Israeli air campaign against Iran began on February 28.
The IRGC had earlier threatened to target facilities of major US tech firms across the Gulf including Microsoft, Google and Meta. Last week Amazon Web Services reported "disruption" to its Gulf region operations marking the second time its services were affected by the conflict.
The broader conflict has killed more than 1,340 people since February 28 including former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran has responded with waves of drone and missile attacks hitting targets across Israel Jordan, Iraq and Gulf nations hosting US military assets disrupting aviation and global energy markets.
The conflicting claims underline a growing misinformation challenge as the war in West Asia enters its second month.