Iran claims drone strikes on AWS data centers were deliberate and strategic
The Iranian Fars News Agency, which is close to the country’s armed forces, says that strikes against AWS facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were deliberate and had strategic significance.
AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing unit, had said previously that one of its facilities in Bahrain was damaged due to a drone strike on Sunday. Earlier, two data centers in the UAE were also damaged after they were directly struck by drones.
All these facilities remain offline, and in a Telegram post, the Farsi News Agency is now claiming that Tehran sent drones to Bahrain “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities.”
“The attacks are part of the IRGC's recent operations against Amazon data centres in Dubai and other strategic centres in the region,” the post on Telegram adds.
“Targeting Amazon and Microsoft in these operations has dealt a serious blow to the enemy's technological and information infrastructure.”
The Farsi News Agency is obviously not an independent media outlet, and no attack on Microsoft has been reported. The claim of “a serious blow” to the enemy is also a bit of a stretch.
NewsGuard also suggests that Iranian state media outlets have stepped up their disinformation delivered to Iranians through claims of supposed battlefield victories, many backed by old or manipulated images.
Iran’s claims nevertheless signal intent and a decision to apply pressure to the US and Israel by targeting their allies in the Gulf. Besides, the claims just might be true.
No one believed Iran’s claims that the US bombed a school and killed scores of children, but then The New York Times conducted an independent analysis and said that the school near an Iranian naval base was indeed hit.
In addition to structural damage, the AWS data centers also experienced power disruptions and some water damage after firefighters worked to put out sparks and fire. Some popular AWS applications experienced “elevated error rates and degraded availability” due to the incident.
AWS advised cloud customers to back up their data, consider migrating their workloads to other regions, and direct traffic away from Bahrain and the UAE.
Big tech investments in the Middle East are indeed under serious threat. The two regional leaders, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, see AI as a long-term national future industry, calling computing power the new oil.
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They’re attracting big tech AI data centers and building their own AI ecosystems. According to market research firm IMAEC Group, the Middle East’s AI market, valued at $6.6 billion in 2025, is projected to surge to $168 billion by 2034.
But recent attacks are a reminder that modern tech – mostly making money on the cloud – still needs physical facilities on the ground, and these are vulnerable. Plus, data centers are very large and difficult to hide.
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