Iran Conflict: More Drone Strikes hit AWS Gulf Data Centres
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has confirmed drone strikes damaged three of its data centre facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, causing power disruptions and prolonged service outages across the region.
The incidents occurred on Sunday (1 March) morning amid escalating conflict following US and Israeli strikes against Iran. AWS initially reported that “objects” had struck a data centre in the UAE, creating “sparks and fire”, while also investigating power and connectivity issues at a site in Bahrain. On Monday, the company confirmed that drone strikes were responsible.
Two facilities in the UAE sustained direct hits. In Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one facility caused damage to infrastructure.
“These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritising the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts."
Power and service disruptions
The infrastructure damage disrupted several core AWS services, including EC2 compute, S3 cloud storage and DynamoDB database services. Customers reported elevated error rates and degraded availability as regional zones were taken offline or operated with limited capacity.
In a subsequent update, AWS said it had made “incremental progress” in recovering DynamoDB and S3 control planes but warned that full restoration would take time.
“We still estimate that the recovery time is at least a day before we are able to fully restore power and connectivity,” the company said.
According to public status updates, two of the three regional data centre hubs remain significantly impaired. A third availability zone is operating normally, though some services have experienced indirect impact due to dependencies on the affected zones.
AWS operates 123 availability zones across 39 regions globally. Customers in the Middle East were advised to take immediate resilience measures.
“We recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East consider taking action now to backup data and potentially migrate your workloads to alternate AWS Regions,” the company said.
Prolonged recovery expected
AWS has cautioned that the extent of the structural damage could result in extended downtime.
“We are working to restore full service availability as quickly as possible, though we expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved,” the company said in a public post.
It also acknowledged the wider geopolitical risk environment facing operators in the region: “Even as we work to restore these facilities, the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable."
The incidents occurred as Iran launched waves of missiles and drones targeting US bases and allies in the region, including the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. US officials have signalled that military operations could continue for several weeks.
Data centre resilience under scrutiny
The strikes highlight the exposure of critical digital infrastructure to geopolitical conflict. Hyperscale data centres are typically designed with layered redundancy, resilient power architecture and fire suppression systems. However, direct physical attacks can disrupt multiple layers simultaneously.
In this case, structural damage affected power delivery systems, while fire suppression activities contributed to additional water damage inside facilities. Such compound impacts can lengthen recovery timelines compared with standard equipment failures.
AWS has not disclosed the specific locations or capacity of the affected facilities, though the UAE and Bahrain serve as key regional hubs for cloud services across the Gulf.
The company declined to comment beyond its public updates. As recovery efforts continue, customers are relying on multi-region architectures and backup strategies to mitigate further disruption.
For operators across the Middle East, the events underscore the importance of physical security, geographic redundancy and contingency planning in regions facing elevated geopolitical risk.
