Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it has not been able to restore service and data access at some of its cloud facilities in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) damaged by drone strikes early in the Iran war.

CNBC reported on Sept. 15 that AWS, in a health dashboard update, said damage at several facilities in Bahrain exceeded what its services were designed to withstand. AWS said that after a close assessment it determined it could not restore access to resources and data stored only in the region.

There is also an unrecovered facility in the UAE. In a separate notice, AWS said it could not restore access to resources and data stored in 1 of the UAE's 3 availability zones. It is continuing restoration work in the other 2 affected availability zones.

The notice is AWS's first public update since April. Amazon has said that in March, 2 data centres in the UAE were directly hit by drones and 1 facility in Bahrain suffered physical damage from a drone strike nearby. At the time, AWS advised customers to move workloads to other regions and warned that service operations could become "unpredictable" as instability in the Middle East continued.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for the strikes at the time, saying it targeted the Bahrain facility because Amazon was supporting the U.S. military.

The attack is heightening concerns about the security and resilience of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure expanding in the Gulf region. The region has been attracting large-scale data centre investment amid rising infrastructure demand driven by the spread of AI.

In May 2025, OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco took part as core partners in the UAE Stargate project. The project was pursued as a mega AI infrastructure initiative to build data centres with a total capacity of 5 gigawatts and use a 10-square-mile site.

But the UAE is reviewing ways to disperse facility placement for the project. Reuters reported that UAE authorities are reviewing security-enhancement measures, including distributing data centres across multiple locations, building some facilities underground, and using blast-resistant materials, drone and missile interception systems, and electronic warfare equipment.

AWS said it would continue supporting customers in Bahrain and the UAE. In the UAE, it plans to provide further updates on service restoration in the coming months. For Bahrain operations, it plans to provide additional guidance in early 2027.