Amazon's AWS unable to restore access at some Mideast data centers after Iran war damage

Cloud computing unit says it’s working to help customers reestablish operations in other regions after facilities in Bahrain, UAE were damaged

REUTERS — Amazon Web Services cannot restore access to its cloud-computing facility in Bahrain and one of three data-hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates following damage during the Iran war, according to a status update seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

Amazon’s cloud computing unit AWS said the damage in Bahrain spanned multiple so-called availability zones, which are clusters of one or more data centers in the same geographic region.

“The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,” AWS said in the status update, which Reuters was first to report. AWS said it was helping Bahrain-based customers to reestablish operations in other regions.

In the UAE, AWS said it was unable to restore access to resources and data hosted exclusively in one availability zone, known as mec1-az2. It is continuing to work on recovering resources across the wider UAE region and in the other two affected zones.

The disruptions began in March following US and Israeli attacks on Iran, which prompted Tehran to retaliate with missile and drone strikes on Israel and Gulf states hosting US military bases. AWS said at the time that two of its facilities in the UAE had been directly struck, while a drone strike close to one of its facilities in Bahrain had physically damaged its infrastructure. The AWS outages affected some banking operations at the time, Reuters has reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.

The attacks have raised questions about the resilience of the Gulf’s rapidly expanding cloud and artificial-intelligence infrastructure. The UAE is revising plans for a major AI data-center project following the Iranian attacks, including by considering dispersing facilities and using underground and blast-resistant infrastructure, Reuters reported last week.

After the first availability zone in Bahrain was damaged in March, AWS began recommending that customers migrate their workloads to other regions, it said in Tuesday’s update. Most did so before the Bahrain region became unavailable following disruption to a second availability zone in April.

AWS said it had since supported customers in reestablishing operations in alternative regions, using backups where available or implementing alternative solutions to mitigate the impact of inaccessible data.

The company said it had assessed all affected infrastructure and exhausted every option for restoring data and resources that had not been migrated before the Bahrain region became unavailable.

AWS said it remained committed to supporting customers in both countries.

In the UAE, the company said it was working to replace affected infrastructure and would provide an update on restoration of services in the coming months. It also said it would provide a further update in early 2027 for Bahrain operations.

The company said it had notified the relevant authorities in both countries and continued to work with them.