Full Breakdown
AWS Says It Cannot Restore Bahrain and UAE Cloud Zones Six Months After Drone Strikes
By Drooid · · How we work
Core Event
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it is unable to restore access to its cloud-computing facilities in Bahrain and one of three data-hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The decision follows damage inflicted by drone strikes in early March 2026, when two UAE data centres were hit directly and a Bahrain site suffered nearby damage. The company continues to assist customers in migrating workloads to other AWS regions but offers no timeline for full restoration.
Background & Context
The strikes occurred amid the broader Iran-U.S./Israel conflict that began on February 28 2026, when the United States and Israel launched an offensive against Iran. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attacks, citing Amazon’s support for U.S. military operations as a motive. The Gulf region had been positioned as a hub for artificial-intelligence infrastructure, with projects such as the UAE’s “Stargate” campus—planned by OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco—targeted for massive power capacity.
Data & Statistics
- AWS operates nine Middle-East sites: three each in the UAE, Bahrain and Israel, with three more slated for Saudi Arabia.
- The damaged Bahrain network spanned multiple availability zones, while one UAE zone remains offline.
- By late April, about 60 AWS services in the affected region were still down.
- AWS has stopped billing for the impacted zones and expects to provide further updates for Bahrain in early 2027; no specific UAE timeline was given.
Official Statements & Responses
The company emphasized continued customer-support assistance for migration to alternate regions and noted that most customers have already re-established operations using backups. AWS also indicated that it will share additional updates on the UAE situation “in the coming months” and on Bahrain “in early 2027.”
Why It Matters
The prolonged outage challenges the assumption that cloud providers can quickly recover from regional damage, raising concerns for insurers, regulators and enterprises that rely on cloud resilience. The incident has prompted the UAE to reconsider the design of the Stargate project, exploring underground facilities and enhanced security measures. As the Gulf’s AI-driven growth hinges on stable, secure data infrastructure, the AWS disruption underscores the vulnerability of large-scale cloud deployments in conflict zones.