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Prairie Gates

(7,927 posts)
Wed Mar 11, 2026, 10:13 PM 9 hrs ago

One of the less covered stories in the war today: Citibank abandons its Mideast HQ

The Israelis and US announced that they view Iranian banking as targetable infrastructure, and there was an actual strike on a banking data center. The reasoning was that the bank datacenter processes paychecks for the Iranian military, so it is a military target. The strike on the data center reportedly killed numerous civilian employees. You can call it a military target, but it was a civilian facility.

In any case, the Iranians said "Oh, are banks acceptable targets now? Fine. Then we'll hit your banks, too." As far as I know, no bank in the region has been successfully hit by Iran, but they have made good on tit-for-tat retaliations, hitting a Bahrain desalinization plant after their own desalination plant was hit, so it was at least a threat that should be taken seriously.

And it was. The Citibank regional headquarters is located in the Dubai International Financial Center. Citi basically told its employees to get out of the office - run don't walk. No word on re-opening.

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