Iran threatened on Tuesday to strike facilities in the Middle East owned by US technology companies as part of the escalating war that began with US and Israeli strikes at the end of February.

In a statement shared to the country's Tasmin News Agency, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that as of Wednesday, it would consider more than a dozen tech companies as "legitimate targets," including Apple, Google, Intel and Tesla. The message advised employees to leave their workplaces and residents near those companies "in all countries" to leave the area within a kilometer.

On Wednesday, Amazon's cloud computing operations in Bahrain were damaged, according to a report by the Economic Times. Amazon AWS was the subject of a previous drone attack in March. 

Representatives for companies on the list, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Palantir, Boeing, Intel and Tesla, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to CNBC, an Intel spokesperson said, "The safety and well-being of our team is our number one priority. We are taking steps to safeguard and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation." 

The US government said it will defend the companies that have been threatened. An unnamed White House official told Reuters that the US "is and was prepared to curtail any attacks by Iran."