Thought Leadership
Six months after the drone attacks during the Iran war, Amazon Web Services delivers a sobering assessment: A portion of the destroyed cloud infrastructure in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates will suffer permanent outages.
Amazon Web Services announced on Tuesday via its status portal that damaged cloud locations in Bahrain and parts of the UAE will not return to service.
No way back for affected sites
According to the entry in the AWS Health Dashboard, the damage at several locations in Bahrain exceeds the limits for which the systems were designed. After a thorough review, it is clear that customers will no longer regain access to the resources and data stored exclusively there.
The situation is similar in an Availability Zone in the UAE: There, too, data and resources are considered unrecoverable. Two other affected zones in the Emirates, on the other hand, are to be repaired, with corresponding work ongoing according to AWS.
“After a thorough review, we have concluded that we cannot restore access to resources and data hosted exclusively in Availability Zone ‘mec1-az2’. We continue to work to restore regional resources as well as zonal resources hosted in the other affected Availability Zones (‘mec1-az1’ and ‘mec1-az3’).”
AWS
Attacks from March
Amazon confirmed in March that two data centers in the UAE were struck directly by drones. A location in Bahrain was affected by a nearby attack. Affected customers were instructed to migrate their workloads to other AWS regions at the time. Amazon also anticipated ongoing uncertainties in the Middle East and categorized operations in the region as difficult to plan.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attacks. As the rationale for targeting Bahrain, they cited Amazon’s support for the US military.
Gulf region rethinks data center security concept
The incident is sparking discussions about the security of AI infrastructure in the Gulf. The region had recently made strong efforts to attract investments amidst the AI boom. In May 2025, OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, and Cisco pledged their involvement in the “UAE Stargate” project, a data center campus with a planned capacity of 5 gigawatts across an area of approximately 26 square kilometers.
Reuters reports, citing informed sources, that the UAE is currently revising the project. Under consideration are greater spatial distribution of the facilities across the country as well as additional protective measures. These include underground-built locations, blast-resistant concrete, and defense systems against drones and missiles.
Further updates announced
Amazon stated that it remains committed to supporting customers in Bahrain and the UAE. New information for the Emirates is set to follow in the coming months. For Bahrain, the company plans an update in early 2027 at the earliest.
(Editorial Team)
