Amazon Web Services said on Tuesday it cannot restore access to cloud-computing facilities in Bahrain and parts of the United Arab Emirates, more than six months after drone strikes damaged the sites in the early days of the Iran war.
In an update posted to the AWS health dashboard, the company said damage at multiple Bahrain sites exceeded what its services are designed to withstand. “After a thorough assessment, we have determined that we are unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in this region,” AWS wrote.
In a separate post, AWS said it had similarly been unable to recover resources and data stored in one of its availability zones in the UAE. It continues to work to restore two other affected UAE zones.
The posts are AWS’ first public update on the incidents since April. Amazon said in March that two of its data centers in the UAE had been directly struck by drones, while a facility in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby strike. The company told customers to move their workloads to other AWS regions and warned that instability in the Middle East was likely to continue, making operations “unpredictable.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the strikes and said it targeted the Bahrain facility over Amazon’s support for the U.S. military. The attacks included strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure.
The attacks have raised questions about the security of future data center projects in the Gulf, a region that has sought to capitalize on demand tied to the artificial intelligence buildout. In May 2025, OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco signed on as core partners for UAE Stargate, a campus expected to reach 5-gigawatt capacity across 10 square miles.
The UAE is now considering dispersing the project’s facilities across the country and adding security measures, including building some sites underground, using blast-resistant concrete and drone and missile interceptors, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Amazon said it remains committed to supporting customers in Bahrain and the UAE. The company said it expects to provide further updates on the UAE situation in the coming months, and will have more to share for Bahrain users in early 2027.