Iran declares US-Israeli economic, banking interests in region are targets 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has threatened to attack “economic centres and banks” related to United States and Israeli entities in the region after what it called an attack on an Iranian bank, with the war in its 12th day.

A spokesperson for the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, a group described as IRGC-owned by the United Nations, said on Wednesday that “the enemy left our hands open to targeting economic centres and banks belonging to the United States and the Zionist regime in the region”.

It warned that “people of the region should not be within a one-kilometre radius of banks”.

“The Americans should await our countermeasure and our painful response,” it also added.

Iran’s counterattacks have continued as explosions have rocked Tehran, as Iran stated that US and Israeli forces have bombed nearly 10,000 civilian sites in the country and killed more than 1,300 civilians, since the war began on February 28.

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency released a list of offices and infrastructure run by top US companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications, describing them as “Iran’s new targets”, said Al Jazeera’s Maziar Motamedi, reporting from Tehran.

“As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands,” the agency said.

The companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle, and the listed offices and infrastructure for cloud-based services are located in multiple Israeli cities, as well as in some Gulf countries, said Motamedi.

Iran’s state broadcaster on Wednesday said that an Israeli attack overnight on a bank branch in Tehran was an “illegitimate and unusual act in war”, and that “the enemy” has declared economic centres and banks tied to the US and Israel as targets themselves.

According to state television, several employees were killed in the incident.

The warnings by the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters came after Israel on Monday bombed a Lebanese building in Beirut’s southern suburbs that was reportedly a branch of the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial institution.

Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a quasi-banking institution that offers interest-free loans to people, is one of the many charity organisations run by Hezbollah, including schools, hospitals and low-price supermarkets.

Israel has claimed it is trying to destroy Hezbollah and its capacity to operate and in the process has killed at least 570 people and displaced 780,000 in the beleaguered nation.