Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed on Tuesday that it is unable to restore access to cloud-computing facilities in Bahrain and one of its three data hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates. This decision comes more than six months after these sites were damaged by drone strikes during the early days of the Iran war. AWS stated that the damage at multiple Bahrain-based sites, where services were disrupted twice in March and once in April, exceeded what its services are designed to withstand. The company's health dashboard update indicated that it exhausted every option for restoring data and resources that had not been migrated before the regions became unavailable.
The inability to restore these facilities means that resources and data exclusively hosted in these regions are permanently inaccessible. This marks AWS's first public update since April regarding the incidents. In March, Amazon had reported that two of its data centers in the UAE were directly struck by drones, and a facility in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby strike. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the strikes, stating they targeted the Bahrain facility due to Amazon's support for the U.S. military.
AWS has stated that most affected customers have already migrated their operations to alternate regions by restoring backups or copying accessible data. The company remains committed to supporting customers in Bahrain and the UAE, expecting to provide further updates on the UAE situation in the coming months and for Bahrain in early 2027. The attacks have raised concerns about the security of future data center developments in the Gulf region, particularly after plans for a massive campus like UAE Stargate, involving OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, and Cisco, were discussed in May 2025. The UAE is now reportedly considering dispersing facilities and implementing enhanced security measures, including underground sites and drone interceptors.
