Amazon Web Services cannot restore cloud facilities in Bahrain and UAE

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it cannot restore cloud-computing facilities in Bahrain and parts of the United Arab Emirates following extensive damage caused by military strikes. The company stated that the destruction to its infrastructure spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded the resilience limits for which its regional services were designed.

In the UAE, AWS confirmed that resources and data held exclusively within one specific availability zone, labeled mec1-az2, are beyond recovery. While engineers continue to attempt to salvage data from two other affected zones in the region, the damage to the specific zone is considered irreparable. Similarly, in Bahrain, the company determined it is unable to restore access to resources hosted in that region after a drone strike near a site left the infrastructure destroyed.

The outages are linked to retaliatory missile and drone strikes launched by Iran in March following military actions by the US and Israel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the strikes, stating they targeted the Bahrain facility due to Amazon’s support of the US military. These events have raised concerns regarding the stability and resilience of cloud and AI infrastructure in the Middle East.