Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that due to extensive damage from retaliatory attacks by Iran, access to its cloud infrastructure in Bahrain and one of the three data hosting regions in the United Arab Emirates is no longer recoverable. This news was published on September 15.
Details of the Damage and Infrastructure Status
According to AWS, the damage to its infrastructure has spread to several Availability Zones and exceeds what the company's regional and multi-region services are designed for. In the UAE, resources and data that were exclusively stored in one region, named mec1-az2, have been damaged to the extent that they are no longer recoverable. Engineers are still working to salvage data from two other regions and across the UAE.
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Availability Zones refer to a cluster of one or more data centers located in a similar geographic area, and AWS relies on them to maintain services during issues at one site.
History and Consequences of the Attacks
This disruption dates back to March when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, and Tehran responded with missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf countries hosting U.S. military bases. At that time, AWS confirmed that two of its data centers in the UAE were directly affected, while a drone attack near one of its Bahraini sites destroyed its infrastructure.
Most customers based in Bahrain moved their workloads to other locations at AWS's recommendation before the service interruption in April, but the company has now exhausted all options to recover what remains.
This damage raises questions about the resilience of rapidly developing cloud and AI infrastructures in the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates is reviewing its plans to secure a large AI data center project and is considering building decentralized sites and blast-resistant and underground constructions. Additionally, the data center is set to be equipped with air defense systems.
The United States and Israel have long turned AI infrastructures into weapons of war that are widely used in the battlefields of West Asia. Cloud platforms, data centers, and high-capacity computing systems now assist in storing information, processing recorded communications, analyzing surveillance, and supporting military operations in West Asia, particularly in Gaza and Iran.
Iran believes that data centers operated by U.S. technology companies are not merely civilian facilities but strategic assets that support U.S. and Israeli aggression and therefore are legitimate targets for retaliation.
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