Amazon Web Services Access to cloud computing facilities in parts of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates cannot be restored, more than six months after they were damaged in a drone strike early in the Iran war, it said on Tuesday.
In an update posted to its AWS health dashboard, the company said the damage at multiple Bahrain-based sites exceeded the levels its services were designed to withstand.
“After a thorough evaluation, we determined that it is not possible to restore access to resources and data hosted exclusively in this region,” AWS wrote.
AWS said in a separate post that it was similarly unable to recover resources and data stored in one of its availability zones in the UAE. We continue to work on the recovery of the other two affected UAE zones.
The post marks the first time AWS has published an update on the incident since April. In March, Amazon announced that two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were hit by drones, and a facility in Bahrain was also damaged in a nearby attack. The company told customers to move their workloads to other AWS regions and warned that instability in the Middle East would likely continue and operations would be “unpredictable.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the airstrike, saying it targeted facilities in Bahrain to support U.S. forces in the Amazon.
The attack raises questions about the security of future data center development in the Gulf region, which was seeking to capitalize on the surge in infrastructure demand associated with the artificial intelligence boom. In May 2025, OpenAI, Nvidia, oracle and Cisco has signed up as a core partner for UAE Stargate, a large campus expected to have 5 gigawatts of capacity and cover 10 square miles.
Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the United Arab Emirates is currently considering revising its plans to disperse the facilities across the country and implementing enhanced security measures, including building some facilities underground and using bomb-resistant concrete and drones and missile interceptors.
Amazon said it remains committed to supporting customers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company said it will provide further updates on the situation in the UAE “in the coming months” and expects to provide more information to users in Bahrain in early 2027.
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