Amazon fails to restore Gulf data centers

Amazon Web Services cannot restore access to its cloud computing infrastructure in Bahrain and to one of three data hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates following damage suffered during the conflict with Iran. A status report obtained by Reuters on 15 September 2026 stated that the damage in Bahrain hit multiple availability zones, exceeding the tolerance capacity for which regional and multi-zone services were designed.

The operational disruptions began in March after strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks by Tehran across the Persian Gulf. AWS confirmed that two facilities in the UAE were hit directly, while a drone strike near a Bahrain unit caused physical damage. Temporary outages also affected banking operations in the region.

In the UAE, Amazon cannot recover access to resources hosted exclusively in the mec1-az2 availability zone, though it is working to replace equipment across the wider region. In Bahrain, where a second zone was compromised in April and knocked the entire region offline, the company stated that it has exhausted all technical possibilities to restore untransferred data. Amazon expects to provide an operational update for the UAE over the coming months and a new official update for Bahrain in early 2027.