ABNA24 - Amazon Web Services (AWS) says Iran's retaliatory strikes during US-Israeli aggression have left its cloud-computing facility in Bahrain and one of three data-hosting zones in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) beyond recovery, a report says.
“The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,” AWS noted in a status update reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.
An availability zone refers to a cluster of one or more data centers located within the same geographic region, allowing AWS to maintain services when a single facility goes down.
The outages trace back to March, when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with missile and drone strikes against Israel and Persian Gulf states hosting US military bases.
AWS confirmed at the time that two of its UAE facilities had suffered direct hits, while a drone strike near one of its Bahraini sites left the infrastructure destroyed.
Most Bahrain-based customers had moved their workloads elsewhere on AWS advice before the region went dark in April, but the company has now exhausted its options for recovering the remaining data.
The destruction has raised questions about the resilience of the Persian Gulf’s rapidly expanding cloud-computing and AI infrastructure, which is increasingly exposed to the consequences of Washington and Tel Aviv’s militarized regional policies.
The UAE is already revising plans for a major AI data center project, considering decentralized construction, underground and blast-resistant facilities, and even anti-air defenses for data centers, according to a report by the Cradle.
The growing vulnerability of such infrastructure comes as the US and Israel have transformed artificial intelligence and cloud-computing systems into instruments of warfare across West Asia, including in Gaza and Iran.
Cloud platforms, data centers and high-capacity computing systems are used to store intelligence, process intercepted communications, analyze surveillance and support military operations.
Iran maintains that data centers operated by US technology companies are not merely civilian facilities, but strategic assets supporting US and Israeli aggression.
Israel has deployed AI-powered systems, including The Gospel, and Lavender to process mass data, generate targeting recommendations and support military aggression against Palestinians in Gaza where the regime has killed over 73,000 people, and wounded more than 173,000 since October 7, 2023.
Corporate infrastructure linked to Microsoft Azure has also been reported to support the storage of intercepted Palestinian communications, while AI-driven drone surveillance has been used by Israel to track and target Palestinians.
The US has similarly deployed algorithmic warfare systems such as Palantir’s Maven to process satellite, drone and radar intelligence and accelerate the production of targeting recommendations against Iran.
More than 1,000 targets were reportedly designated within the first 24 hours of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with one resulting strike killing 168 civilians, including 120 schoolchildren, at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in southern Iran.
The latest round of aggression against Iran began on February 28, when US and Israeli forces launched large-scale strikes on Iranian territory.
Iran’s Armed Forces responded with daily waves of missiles and drones targeting US and Israeli assets across the region, and closed the Strait of Hormuz to US and allied vessels.
On June 17, Iran and the US signed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in an effort to end the wars across all fronts.
In recent weeks, in violation of the MoU, the US has continued its naval blockade of Iran and struck multiple locations in southern Iran, prompting Tehran to target US military facilities across the region and close the strategic waterway again.
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