Iran warns U.S. tech firms could become targets as war expands (opens in new tab)

They were always hacking all the time.

The semi-official IRGC account warns of attacks on offices and infrastructure of US & Israeli firms in the ME with drones and missiles, not zero-days.

I'd expect employees of Iranian descent to be under greater scrutiny than before, though most here probably escaped the regime with great hatred of it.

Taunting someone else on the ice is a bad idea.

As is giving anyone reason to want you to plunge to your icy death, rather than to merely fall gently on your butt.

This is not a pointless war. You may not like Trump or Bibi, but geopolitics-wise this war make perfect sense on many levels.

First, it limits China's ability to hoard cheep oil as Iran has to sell its oil with a discount due to being sanctioned. China hoards oil as it plans to attack Taiwan and it understands that there will be sanctions on oil trade. So, to minimize the shock on its economy China hoards oil. [1]

Second, Iran is the reason why Gulf states are surrounded by instability: Houthis, armed and funded by IR, in Yemen make Saudis and UAE uneasy. Iraqi militias funded and armed by IR as well sabotage internal politics of Iraq the same way Hizballah destabilizes Lebanon. No one in the Gulf (except Qatar maybe, up until recently) wanted strong IR. These countries and their peace is essential for US and the world economy.

Third, if IR gets nukes, most of the Gulf nations would want nukes too. They already see themselves surrounded by IR-funded militias. We do not need more nukes, we need less nukes in the world. And I have no idea how people simply ignore the fact that IR already has 400+kg of 60%-encriched uranium. Why if not for bombs?

So yeah, geopolitics-wise this war makes perfect sense. Islamic Republic is major destabilizing factor in the region, and this war attempts to resolve it.

Why the current admin cannot articulate it clearly, idk.

[1] https://jkempenergy.com/2026/02/15/chinas-oil-stocks-and-rea...

We overthrew their democratically elected government to install the Shah as a puppet dictator because the British goaded us into it by hand-waving about "communism" after Iran nationalized their own oil reserves from the Anglo-Iranian Company (which became BP). What followed was a brutal era of repression where American companies took a slice of oil revenue.

Once this became untenable, another of our puppets, Saddam Hussein, ejected the future Ayatollah Khomenei from Iraq in 1978. Why? Because we wanted the religious fundamentalists to win instead of the communists, which might bring Iran into the Soviet sphere of influence.

we then propped up a decade of war with Iraq by supplying Iraq with weapons. More than a million people died.

Iran has weathered decades of sanctions, which is a fancy way of saying "we're going to starve you and deny your citizens basic medical care". The death toll for this is also likely in the millions.

We've let our rabid attack dog in the region, Israel, bomb Iranian consulates (eg Damascus), assassinate scientists, diplomators and negotiators, bomb them with impunity and otherwise commit regular war crimes.

We've gone to war for no other reason than Israel wants Iran to be a fail-state because it threatens the Greater Israel project [1]. It's clear that there was no military planning in any of this or, more likely, military planners probably said "this is a bad idea, we can't win" and they were ignored.

Iran continued complying with the JCPOA for at least a year after Trump cancelled it at the behest of Sheldon Adelson [2].

All of this while Saudi Arabia, our "ally", provided material suport to the 9/11 hijackers [3]. Our attack dog spies on us. A lot eg Jonathon Pollard [4]. And Jeffrey Epstein was almost certainly a Mossad access asset that compromised every level of our government, our companies and our educational institutions.

We are the bad guys here and I hope one day Iran gets some justice for the harm we've inflicted upon it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel

[2]: https://fpif.org/these-three-billionaires-paved-way-for-trum...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Saudi_role_in_the_Sept...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

Iran can clearly barely defend itself. The idea they will suddenly pull off something meaningful now strains credulity.

It's only pointless as long as you ignore their legitimate attempts of building nukes. If you don't want them to have nukes, then military action is the only way to stop them unfortunately. Because if/once they do get a nuke, it'll be impossible to stop them after that, and they'll hold the entire middle east hostage, so might as well do everything you can to prevent that before it happens, now that Russia is too busy to lend them a hand.

>Iran has generally been an active and persistant threat for many US firms long before this war began

I doubt this. Iran's leadership, like any dictatorship, just wants to be left alone to subjugate its people and enjoy the masses of wealth and power they have. When you're in such a privileged but fragile position, you don't go around poking the hornet's nest looking to start a fight with the biggest military in the world, because it would mean your end.

But Iran will probably retaliate now that they got attacked. OR, it will be a false flag to justify boots on the ground. IDK.

That definition actually isn't traditional, it's recent and was created due to what was seen in both the World Wars last century. Fire bombing Dresden? Not a legitimate military target by modern definitions (parts of Dresden perhaps, but not the way the attack was conducted). The rockets fired at the UK by the Germans almost blindly? Not legitimate by today's standard.

Prior to the Geneva Convention, there was much less debate about legitimacy, it was just done.

Like if you take over a control system to open a dam, sure i'd buy that as counting. But say ddos'ing a website? Its hard for me to picture that as counting as an armed attack.

> Traditionally that meant armed forces, their bases, their supplies and so on. But the line has gotten awful blurry. Tech companies have become entwined with the state and are fundamnetal parts of both domestic and foreign policy. Targeting of military strikes is an obvious example

The idea of having private companies form part of your defense industrial base isn't new. I would assume the same rules apply to tech companies contributing as a factory making dual use products for the war effort would.

Any form of supply chain was considered a valid military target, e.g., refineries, factories, assembly lines, etc. If an army relies on tech from, say a cloud provider via gov cloud, then it can be argued that disrupting cloud operations and thus hindering army's coordination, information collection, etc., is a valid target.

So, I am not sure there is anything new here.

I can tell you what's not and then why it's important to know what's not...

The islamist ruling Iran are already using cluster bombs and these are banned in 120 countries because they indiscriminately target civilians: cluster bombs killing civilians aren't aiming at "valid military targets".

Note that the same islamist regime also sent its guards into hospitals to finish the wounded. They killed 30 000+ of their own civilians a few weeks ago. Killing 30 000+ unarmed civilians is not a valid military target.

And the regime in Iran applauded loudly, like in nearly every country ruled by sharia law, when 1200 young people were having fun at a music festival on Oct 7th and considered it an "act of resistance". Killing 1200 young people dancing and enjoying life ain't a "valid military target".

We've now established that the Islamic Republic of Iran won't hesitate to target civilians and shall celebrate the "resistance" when thousands of civilians (including but not limited to their own) are killed.

So, no matter whether the targets are valid or not, nothing they say about the validity of the targets they pick should be taken into account: they're murderers slaughtering and celebrating the slaughter of civilians.

Everything that hurts the only thing the orange retard cares about, the stock market, they've been pretty clear about it I think

That sounds like a poor strategy. Expend all of your resources in one grand gesture rather than trying to push your enemy's internal factions to curtail or end the fighting?

Unlike the current US administration, Iran is playing a long game - one in which it has been isolated in many ways. Indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets is not going to win it many friends; putting pressure on the tech companies that have been buddying up to the administration and may have some sway, on the other hand, is a cheap strategy that could pay off. Iran understands that the only language that seems to matter with Trump's backers is profit; threaten that and you may have some success.

The fact that Iran has already done some damage to AWS data centers makes it seem likely they could do so again if they tried. I don't know for certain, I'm not a military intelligence expert, but the strategy of "throw the kitchen sink at it" seems like a sure loser.

They warned about hitting the oil infrastructure first. Then they did it. This is the same. They are warning so that the civilian personnel will be withdrawn from the targets and measures will be taken. Then they will strike them.

Like damn, between reduced work-weeks and the prospect of wrecking our government-entwined spyvertising parasites, maybe the war was a good idea...