AWS Says It Cannot Restore Bahrain Cloud Facility and One UAE Zone After Drone Strikes

Amazon Web Services said on September 15 that more than six months after drone strikes damaged its infrastructure in the early phase of the Iran war, it cannot restore its cloud computing facility in Bahrain or one of three data-hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates. In a status update, AWS said the infrastructure damage spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded the design tolerance of its regional and multi-availability-zone services. In the UAE, only resources and data stored in the availability zone labeled mec1-az2 have been damaged beyond recovery. AWS said engineers are still working to restore the two other affected UAE availability zones.

In March 2026, AWS said two of its data centers in the UAE were directly hit by drones, while a facility in Bahrain was damaged by nearby strikes. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attacks and said it targeted the Amazon facility in Bahrain on the grounds that Amazon supports the United States military. The company said it has now exhausted all options for recovering legacy resources, marking AWS's first public update on the situation since April 2026.

The UAE had planned to build a large data center campus called "UAE Stargate." After the attacks, the UAE is reworking the project, evaluating measures such as dispersing facilities across the country, building some sites underground, using blast-resistant concrete, and deploying drone and missile interceptors. Amazon said it remains committed to supporting its customers in Bahrain and the UAE. The company said it will provide further updates on the UAE situation in the coming months and will give Bahrain users more information in early 2027.