Iran air bombs AWS Data Centres in UAE and Bahrain in retaliation

Following the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive on Iran, Tehran launched a coordinated strike that directly hit two AWS data centres in the United Arab Emirates and caused significant structural damage to a third Amazon facility in Bahrain.

The attacks mark the first time a nation-state has intentionally used kinetic weapons against commercial cloud infrastructure, with Iranian state media claiming the facilities were targeted for their alleged role in "supporting enemy military and intelligence activities."

The ‘Shahed’ strikes: Data centers in the crosshairs

The strikes occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, catching the region's tech hubs off guard.

Two AWS facilities in the ME-CENTRAL-1 (UAE) region were directly struck by Shahed-136 drones. The impact triggered massive fires and required emergency fire suppression, which subsequently caused extensive water damage to server racks and power systems.

In Bahrain (ME-SOUTH-1), a drone detonated in close proximity to a primary facility. While the building remained standing, the blast wave caused "physical impact to infrastructure," disrupting cooling and power delivery.

The outages brought digital life to a standstill for millions. In the UAE, residents were temporarily unable to check bank balances, order food, or pay for taxis as local apps relying on the impaired Availability Zones went dark.

‘Military support’ allegations

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), via the state-aligned Fars News Agency, took responsibility for the operation, framing it as a strategic necessity rather than a random act of terror. Tehran claimed the centers were being used to process localized information-gathering for U.S. and Israeli forces. "These centers are the refineries of the modern war machine," one state broadcaster noted.

Some reports suggest the timing was a direct response to the U.S. military’s widely publicised use of Anthropic’s Claude AI to plan the initial February 28 strikes on Iranian command centers.

The offensive accelerated following the confirmed death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the opening exchanges of the war.

AWS response: ‘Migrate now’

Amazon’s response has been one of triage and urgent relocation. In a rare move, AWS has "strongly recommended" that all customers with workloads in the Middle East migrate their data to alternate regions in Europe, the US, or Asia Pacific.

Teams are working on software-based mitigations, but full restoration is expected to be "prolonged." The company admitted that two out of three Availability Zones in the UAE remain significantly impaired.

The ‘Stargate’ risk

The strikes have cast a shadow over President Trump’s $500 billion ‘Stargate’ initiative, which aimed to turn the Gulf into a global AI hub. Experts now warn that the region’s dream of becoming an "AI superpower" may be delayed by new national security concerns.

A new frontier’ in asymmetric warfare

Geopolitical analysts at the CSIS and The Guardian note that this shift from cyber-attacks to physical drone strikes on data centres changes the "loss calculus" for global tech giants.

The incident proves that while "The Cloud" feels ethereal, its physical heart, the cooling units, turbines, and power substations, remains highly vulnerable to low-cost, expendable drone technology.

Consequently, governments are now considering bringing data centers into the same national security frameworks as nuclear plants and water treatment facilities.

"If data is the new oil, then Iran has just attacked the refineries," said one tech expert. "This is a wake-up call that the infrastructure of the internet is now a legitimate target in modern war."