Amazon Web Services Fails to Restore Cloud Facilities Damaged in Bahrain

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, that it has been unable to restore access to its cloud computing infrastructure in Bahrain and one of its data hosting regions in the UAE. The damage, which occurred during the war with Iran in March, impacted multiple "availability zones" in Bahrain, described as relatively independent sites each containing one or more data centers. AWS stated that the extent of the damage exceeded the resilience levels its regional and multi-regional services were designed to withstand.

In Bahrain, AWS has been assisting clients in migrating their operations to other cloud regions since the facilities went offline. The company exhausted all available options to recover resources and data that remained within the affected region before it became inoperable. In the UAE, AWS confirmed it could not regain access to resources and data exclusively hosted in the availability zone known as ME-C1-AZ2, one of three such zones in the country. The company is continuing infrastructure repairs in the UAE and working to restore resources across all affected zones.

The disruptions trace back to March, when AWS facilities in the Gulf were damaged amidst the war involving Iran. AWS had previously reported direct damage to two facilities in the UAE and a drone attack near a Bahrain facility that caused material damage. These attacks were part of the broader confrontation following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, with Tehran retaliating with missiles and drones targeting Israel and Gulf countries hosting U.S. military bases.

Reports at the time indicated that the AWS service outages affected some banking operations, highlighting the reliance of critical sectors on regional cloud data centers. After the first availability zone in Bahrain was damaged in March, AWS advised customers to move their workloads. Most clients complied before a second availability zone failure in April rendered the entire Bahrain region inoperable. Since then, AWS has helped customers restart services in alternative locations, using backups or other solutions to mitigate the impact of data and resource inaccessibility.

AWS confirmed a comprehensive assessment of the damaged Bahraini infrastructure and stated that all available means were used to attempt recovery of un-migrated data and resources before concluding that access was impossible. In the UAE, infrastructure replacement is ongoing, with a further update on service restoration expected in the coming months. AWS plans to issue another update on its Bahrain operations in early 2027. The company has informed relevant authorities in both countries and continues to coordinate with them while supporting affected clients.

The damage has raised questions about the resilience of Gulf cloud computing and AI infrastructure against military conflicts and drone/missile attacks. The UAE has begun reviewing plans for large-scale AI data center projects, considering options like multi-site distribution, underground facilities, and enhanced blast resistance for buildings. The incident underscores the risks of concentrating critical digital services in limited locations, especially when damage extends beyond a single availability zone designed for localized outages.