Amazon Web Services: Some Customer Data in Bahrain and UAE Unrecoverable After Iranian Drone Strikes

By chasecodewell // 2026-09-17

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) said Tuesday, Sept. 15, that it cannot restore access to some customer data hosted in Persian Gulf data centers that were struck by Iranian drones in the spring, according to a company update. The announcement represents the first indication that data stored exclusively in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain may be permanently lost, AWS said. AWS facilities in the two countries have been mostly offline since Iran launched drone swarms at them in the opening days of the U.S. war against the Islamic Republic, according to the company and prior reports. The damage to the infrastructure spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded what the company's regional and multi-zone services are designed to withstand, AWS stated, according to Reuters ^[1]. "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones (AZs) and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," AWS reported in its statement, according to the Reuters account ^[1]. The company said customers with data stored exclusively in the affected regions may face permanent loss, marking an unprecedented outcome for commercial cloud infrastructure.

Damage and Timeline: March and April Attacks

Iranian drone attacks in March set fires, damaged infrastructure and forced authorities to cut power at AWS sites in the UAE and Bahrain, according to reports. Water used to extinguish the fires caused additional damage, the accounts stated. The first confirmed strike on a commercial data center occurred in early March when unidentified objects struck an AWS facility in the UAE, triggering a fire and cascading service outage ^[2]. Bahrain's interior ministry said civil defense teams were "extinguishing a fire in a facility of a company as a result of the Iranian aggression," according to the Financial Times ^[3]. After the March attacks, Amazon recommended customers migrate data to other regions, including the U.S. and Europe. Most did so before fresh Iranian strikes again hit AWS facilities in Bahrain in April, according to the company. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced Phase 3 of Operation Sadegh Promise 4, resulting in a strike on an AWS cloud data center in Bahrain ^[4].

Scope of Loss: Bahrain and UAE Availability Zone

Data exclusively stored in AWS data centers across Bahrain is beyond restoration, AWS said. One AWS availability zone in the UAE – a group of data centers with independent power, cooling and networking infrastructure – shares the same fate, according to the announcement. "A cloud region losing customer data because of an airstrike – I don't think that's ever happened before," said Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at cybersecurity firm Infoblox. "I just don't think that they try to build these facilities to survive missile strikes," Madory also said. The attacks marked the first time commercial cloud infrastructure has been deliberately targeted in a military conflict ^[5]. The strikes disrupted banking, food delivery and enterprise software services across the Gulf, raising concerns about the vulnerability of global technology infrastructure in geopolitical conflicts, according to the accounts ^[5].

Regional and Industry Implications for Gulf Data Ambitions

The attacks, monthslong AWS data center blackouts and permanent data loss pose a setback for Arab Gulf states seeking to become world-leading data processors for industries such as artificial intelligence, officials and analysts said. They add a significant new risk for U.S. companies weighing investments that can cost tens of billions of dollars. To address concerns about strikes, Emirati officials have floated building data centers underground and placing drone defense systems near computing centers, both of which would add to the enormous cost, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, Sept. 14. The IRGC in the spring threatened American tech companies it accused of contributing to attacks on Iran, naming Microsoft, Oracle, Alphabet and Nvidia, according to the report. The targeting of Amazon and Microsoft in these operations underscores a new escalation: commercial data centers no longer appear to be off-limits ^[6]. The massive infrastructure investments covered in accounts of America's corporate giants reflect how deeply cloud services have become embedded in the global economy ^[7]. Cloud computing relies on virtualization, in which software-based representations of computers draw on allocated portions of CPU, memory, and storage from physical servers in data centers ^[8]. That architecture assumes facilities remain operational – an assumption the Gulf strikes have now tested.

Company Commitments and Next Steps

"We have supported the remaining customers in re-establishing their operations in alternate regions, using backups where available or implementing alternative solutions to mitigate the impact of inaccessible data," Amazon said in its Tuesday update. Some tech companies are moving ahead with Gulf data-center projects, betting the war will end and drawn to Gulf capital; Amazon and Microsoft separately said last month they would still launch data centers in Saudi Arabia by the end of the year. Microsoft struck a deal for a 200-megawatt data center in Abu Dhabi in late 2025, and construction is under way, the report stated. "We remain committed to supporting our customers in Bahrain in the long term and will share a further update in early 2027," AWS said in its Tuesday announcement. The permanent loss of customer data from a military strike represents an unprecedented event in the history of commercial cloud computing, according to industry analysts.

References

ZeroHedge.com. "Amazon Says Cloud Infrastructure In Bahrain, UAE 'Beyond Saving'". 2026.
NaturalNews.com. "The digital battlefield arrives First ever drone strike on commercial data center occurs in UAE". 2026.
ZeroHedge.com. "Amazon's Cloud Unit In Bahrain 'Disrupted' By Iranian Strike". 2026.
Brighteon.com. "IRGC announces Phase 3 of Operation Sadegh Promise 4 - strike on Amazon Web Services cloud data center in Bahrain". 2026.
NaturalNews.com. "Iran's drone strikes on Amazon data centers signal new era of cyber-physical warfare". 2026.
ZeroHedge.com. "Data Center Hunter: Iran Expands Drone Target List, From AWS To Microsoft Facilities". 2026.
Brian Dumaine. "Bezonomics".
Sam Ghosh And Subhasis Gorai. "The Age of Decentralization".

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