New York University (NYU) has temporarily closed its campus in Abu Dhabi after Iran said U.S. universities in the Middle East were “legitimate targets” amid ongoing military operations in the region.
NYU had already moved classes completely online in early March, following the launch of joint military operations by the U.S. and Israel on Iran on Feb. 28.
During this remote learning period, the building remained open for essential services, according to NYU’s student paper, Washington Square News.
Iran’s paramilitary guard threatened strikes on U.S. colleges in the region after it said a joint U.S.-Israeli strike hit Iran’s Isfahan University of Technology and Tehran University of Science and Technology, damaging several buildings and injuring four people.
“The reckless rulers of the White House should know that from now on, all universities of the occupying regime and American universities in the West Asia region are legitimate targets for us until two universities are struck in retaliation for the Iranian universities that have been destroyed,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wrote in a statement on March 28.
Other U.S. institutions with campuses in the Middle East have temporarily closed their schools or moved to remote learning following Iran’s announcement.
Georgetown University temporarily shut down their school in Qatar and moved classes online amid the continued strikes in the region. Students at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus are participating in remote classes until further notice, the university’s student paper reported.
The IRGC also threatened on Tuesday to strike 18 U.S. tech companies operating in the Middle East, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia.
The IRGC said they would begin these attacks Wednesday evening and told employees for the tech companies to leave the area immediately.
A spokesperson for Intel, one of the companies named in the IRGC’s threat, told CNBC the company is “taking steps to safeguard and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation.”
