At 1:30 in the morning, a security guard at Goldman Sachs’ Paris headquarters got a phone call from his boss in London. The message: an Iranian group had threatened to blow up the building at 85 Avenue Marceau in the 16th arrondissement with explosive devices. Pack up. Get out. American banks are targets now.
Sleep tight, Wall Street! The people who chanted “Death to America” for 45 years are finally getting specific about it.
This wasn’t a random threat phoned in by some lunatic. U.S. authorities sent an official email alert to Goldman Sachs advising “heightened vigilance” — which is government-speak for “we think this one is real.” French police responded by conducting overnight surveillance around the building Wednesday night. The Paris prosecutor’s office later announced they found “no suspicious elements,” which is comforting in the same way that the TSA is comforting. You feel better for about thirty seconds.
Five days earlier, French authorities foiled an actual terror plot targeting Bank of America’s Paris headquarters. That one wasn’t a threat — it was an operation. Three suspects were arrested and linked to the planned attack. French investigators connected both incidents to the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, which is a polite way of saying “Iran is waging a shadow war on American businesses in Europe and nobody wants to say it out loud.”
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup employees in Paris have both transitioned to remote work. Let that image settle in for a moment. Some of the most powerful financial institutions on earth — companies that move trillions of dollars across global markets — have told their Paris staff to work from home because Iran’s proxy groups are threatening to bomb their offices.
This is what happens when forty years of “strategic patience” with Iran produces nothing but a nuclear program, a network of terrorist proxies, and a revolutionary guard that openly threatens American companies by name.
And they are naming names. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard issued a statement that reads like a mob boss’s grocery list: “From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed.” They specifically called out Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Not “American interests.” Not “Western businesses.” Specific Fortune 500 companies, listed by name, targeted for destruction.
President Trump has indicated that military operations against Iran will continue for another two to three weeks. The IRGC’s response has been to go after soft targets in allied countries — banks in Paris, tech companies anywhere they can reach. They can’t hit the U.S. military, so they’re hitting U.S. corporations in countries where security is softer.
Before this is over, every American company with a European office is going to be making the same calculation Goldman and Citi just made: is it worth keeping staff in buildings that Iran considers legitimate military targets? The banks moved to remote work. Tech companies are next. And the insurance premiums on those buildings are about to become very interesting.
The bigger picture is one that European governments have been dodging for decades. France, Germany, and the UK spent years cultivating diplomatic and economic relationships with Iran — selling them everything from Airbus jets to industrial equipment — while Iran was building the very terror networks now threatening businesses on European soil. The Bank of America plot wasn’t foiled by French intelligence out of the goodness of their hearts. It was foiled because American intelligence tipped them off.
Europe wanted to do business with Iran. Now Iran is doing business with Europe — just not the kind anyone had in mind.
Three suspects arrested in one plot. A 1:30 AM bomb threat at another. American bank employees working from their apartments because it’s not safe to go to the office. And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard publicly promising that for every military action, an American company pays the price.
We’re not in “strategic patience” territory anymore. We’re in “they’re trying to blow up Goldman Sachs” territory. Those are different territories.