AWS Says Gulf Data Centers Beyond Saving After Iran Strikes

Amazon Web Services has confirmed it cannot restore access to a cloud facility in Bahrain and one of three availability zones in the United Arab Emirates following Iranian drone and missile strikes in March 2026. The company stated that the damage to its infrastructure in Bahrain spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded the failure scenarios its regional systems were designed to withstand. In a status update published on Tuesday, AWS said it had exhausted every option for restoring data and resources in the Bahrain region that had not been migrated before it became unavailable. For the UAE, the company said it was unable to restore access to resources and data hosted exclusively in one availability zone, identified as mec1az2. Recovery efforts are ongoing in the broader UAE region and in the other affected zones. The disruptions trace back to early March 2026, shortly after the United States and Israel began attacking Iran. AWS reported at the time that two of its facilities in the UAE took direct hits, while a drone strike near one of its Bahraini sites caused physical damage. The company attributed the incidents to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.