Amazon's UAE data center damaged in Iran drone attack

Where Diplomacy Meets News

Amazon’s UAE data center damaged in Iran drone attack

March 2, 2026

DUBAI,— Amazon reported Monday that several of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were damaged in Iran drone strikes, causing disruptions to its cloud computing services and creating a recovery process expected to take an extended period.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud division, said on its status page that two facilities in the UAE were directly hit, while in Bahrain, a drone strike near one of its sites caused physical damage.

AWS said the strikes led to structural harm, interruptions in power delivery, and, in some cases, water damage from fire suppression efforts.

“Recovery of full service will take time due to the extent of the physical damage,” AWS said. Earlier, the company reported that unidentified objects triggered a fire on Sunday, prompting authorities to cut power to a cluster of its UAE data centers. Restoration was expected to take at least a day.

A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that the outage affected financial institutions using AWS services. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

AWS also noted that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable due to ongoing regional conflict.

The attacks follow a barrage of drones and missiles launched by Iran at Gulf States. Tehran carried out the strikes in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli air attacks that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.

The attacks also struck airports, seaports, hotels, and residential neighborhoods in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The UAE incident marks the first time a major U.S. technology company’s data center has been hit by military action, raising concerns over the expansion of Big Tech infrastructure in the region.

U.S. tech companies have been investing heavily in the Gulf as a hub for artificial intelligence computing.

Microsoft said in November it plans to invest $15 billion in the UAE by 2029 and will equip its data centers with Nvidia chips. Google and Oracle also operate facilities in the UAE but did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies said last week that in previous conflicts, Iran and allied groups targeted oil pipelines, refineries, and fields in Gulf partner states.

In today’s technology era, they could also aim at data centers, energy systems supporting computing, and critical fiber networks.

AWS said the outage affected about a dozen core cloud services. The company advised customers to back up critical data and migrate workloads to servers in unaffected regions.

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank reported that its platforms and mobile apps were unavailable due to a regional IT disruption but did not directly link the problem to AWS.

(With files from Reuters)