TEHRAN – A digital infrastructure is now being drawn into the Middle East’s expanding conflict as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud infrastructure in Bahrain with cruise missiles in retaliation for US attack on Iran’s Darkhovin nuclear project.
The attacks show how modern warfare is increasingly extending beyond military targets to the cloud networks that power governments, businesses, and financial systems across the Gulf.
The strikes show one of most critical attacks on commercial cloud infrastructure in recent times, Bahrain authorities are yet to respond to Iranian claims of hitting AWS’s cloud region (ME-South-1).
The IRGC Claims to have struck the Amazon data in Bahrain, claiming the facility has been completely destroyed.
This is not the first time: the same Amazon facility in Bahrain was also attacked earlier this year (with prior strikes reported around March/April 2026). pic.twitter.com/HgBEYlC096
— Red Marker – پیرِ ٹویٹر (@RedMarkar) July 21, 2026
The operation was carried out by its Aerospace Force during 24th wave of Operation Nasr 2. Iranian state-affiliated media, including Tasnim News Agency, said the strike was retaliation for what Tehran described as a U.S. attack a day earlier on the under-construction Darkhovin nuclear power project in Iran’s Khuzestan province.
Launched in 2019, AWS’s Bahrain region, known as ME-South-1, was Amazon’s first cloud region in the Middle East and has become a cornerstone of the Gulf’s digital economy.
The facility supports cloud computing, artificial intelligence, storage, databases, and networking services for banks, government agencies, energy companies, logistics operators, and thousands of businesses across the region.
Although AWS designs its infrastructure with multiple Availability Zones to maintain resilience during disruptions, experts warn that repeated attacks on facilities concentrated within a relatively small geographic area could significantly weaken redundancy and extend recovery timelines.
The reported attack comes after months of increasing pressure on AWS infrastructure in the Gulf. A drone activity disrupted operations in Bahrain, forcing customers to migrate workloads to other AWS regions while engineers restored services. Amazon also confirmed that one Bahrain facility sustained damage from a nearby drone strike, while two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates were directly hit during previous attacks.
The alleged missile attack followed Iranian accusations that Washington targeted the construction site of the Darkhovin nuclear power plant on Sunday. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) condemned the reported strike as a violation of international law but did not disclose the extent of the damage or report casualties.
Amazon Web Services outages in UAE, Bahrain go dark amid strikes
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