As Iran War Widens, U.S. Tech Giants Have Shut Gulf Offices

The widening U.S.-Iran conflict has jolted Nvidia, Amazon and Google into emergency mode, forcing shutdowns, remote work mandates and evacuation planning in a part of the world they once saw as the next great frontier for cloud computing and artificial intelligence. What began as a military campaign has swiftly become a corporate crisis, with flight cancellations, damaged server farms and anxious employees revealing how vulnerable the architecture of the global digital economy can be in a shooting war

Smoke rose over the port of Jebel Ali this week as one of the world’s most lucrative technology corridors fell abruptly silent.

After joint U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran answered with retaliatory missile and drone attacks across the Gulf. The shock waves have rippled far beyond military bases and oil terminals. They have reached the glass towers and server farms of American technology companies that once saw the Middle East as a growth frontier.

Nvidia, Amazon and Alphabet have scrambled to secure their employees as fighting spreads and airspace closes. Offices have gone dark. Data centers have been damaged. Dozens of workers remain stranded.

The conflict has upended civilian life across the region, disrupted internet access in Iran and forced mass flight cancellations. Energy shipments and commercial routes have been thrown into uncertainty. For Silicon Valley companies that built vast operations here over the past decade, the crisis is a sudden test of resilience.

Nvidia temporarily closed its Dubai offices, shifting employees to remote work, according to an email sent early Tuesday by its chief executive, Jensen Huang.

Huang said Nvidia’s crisis management team has been “working around the clock and actively supporting affected employees and their families” in the Middle East, including roughly 6,000 employees based in Israel.

In 2019, Nvidia acquired the Israeli networking company Mellanox for $7.13 billion, then the largest deal in its history. Today Israel represents the company’s largest research and development base outside the United States.

As of Tuesday morning, Huang told employees, all those affected and their immediate families were safe.

“Nvidia has deep roots in the region,” Huang wrote. “Thousands of our colleagues live there, and many more across the globe have family and friends affected by these events. Like you, I am watching with great concern for the safety of our Nvidia families.”

The United States State Department on Monday urged Americans to “depart now” from countries across the Middle East using commercial transportation, citing “serious safety risks.” By Tuesday afternoon, officials said they were working to secure military aircraft and charter flights to evacuate Americans as instability deepened.

For some workers, leaving has not been simple.

Dozens of employees from Google’s cloud division remain stuck in Dubai after attending the company’s “Accelerate” sales kickoff there last week, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Airlines have canceled more than 11,000 Middle East flights since the weekend strikes, according to the aviation data firm Cirium. With airspace closing and routes shifting, departures have been chaotic and limited.

A memo sent to some Google cloud employees on Sunday morning acknowledged that staff members were still on the ground and described the recent attacks as “concerning,” according to employees who reviewed it.

Most workers have since left the region, these people said, but dozens remain.

Google said the majority of affected employees are regional staff rather than Americans. The company added that it has security and safety measures in place and has advised employees to follow guidance from local authorities.

“The situation in the Middle East is evolving rapidly and we are monitoring it carefully,” a Google spokesperson said. “Our focus is on the safety and well-being of our employees in the region.”

Dubai has become a strategic hub for Google’s cloud and sales operations across the Middle East and North Africa. Tel Aviv, which has also come under strike, is another critical base. The company is expanding into a vast new headquarters in the ToHa2 Tower, expected to be among its largest sites globally.

Google did not immediately respond to questions about how its Tel Aviv operations have been affected.

Amazon, too, is recalibrating.

The company has instructed all corporate employees in the Middle East to work remotely and to “follow local government guidelines.”

“The safety of our employees and partners remains our top priority, and we are working closely with local teams and local authorities to ensure they are supported,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

Amazon maintains corporate offices in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Turkey and Israel. It also operates warehouses, quick commerce outlets and a sprawling network of data centers that underpin its Amazon Web Services division.

That infrastructure has not been spared.

Two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were “directly struck” by drones on Sunday, according to the company, and a facility in Bahrain sustained damage from a nearby strike. The sites suffered structural damage, power disruptions and water damage after firefighters extinguished sparks and flames.

The facilities remain offline. Some Amazon Web Services applications, including virtual servers and database services, have experienced continuing disruptions.

AWS urged customers to back up data and consider shifting workloads to other regions.

“Even as we work to restore these facilities, the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable,” the company said.

For years, American technology firms courted Gulf governments eager to diversify oil dependent economies and position themselves as innovation hubs. Data centers rose in desert industrial parks. Sales teams fanned out across the region. Conferences filled luxury hotels with engineers and executives.

Now, the region’s transformation into a battleground has exposed the fragility of those ambitions.

Snap said it has asked employees at its four Middle East offices to work remotely until further notice. Staff members have been advised to follow local shelter and departure guidance.

Across the sector, executives are navigating not only physical risks but reputational and operational ones. The same cloud infrastructure that powers start ups and government services also makes companies visible targets in times of war.

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