- Iran says drone attacks on Bahrain and UAE AWS facilities were intentional
- Amazon noted only “sparks and fire” caused by “objects”
- Iran says “structural damage” was also inflicted
Iran’s Fars news agency has claimed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deliberately targeted Amazon data centers in drone strikes, claiming the facilities supported US military and intelligence operations.
Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates were reportedly affected earlier this week, with another Bahrain facility damaged by a nearby drone strike, bringing down parts of Amazon’s cloud services in the region.
Amazon said only that “objects” hit its data center in the UAE and caused “sparks and fire”, but the company did not directly link the incident to the ongoing conflict in the region.
Iran claims responsibility for UAE/Bahrain AWS outages
“This action was taken to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” Fars News Agency said in a Telegram post (translated via Google Translate).
“Two centers in the UAE were directly hit, and a center in Bahrain also suffered serious physical damage,” it continues.
Amazon’s official update only talks about power outages caused by the fire and that it was waiting for permission to reconnect the power to bring services back online. Fars also notes that “structural damage” and “serious physical damage” were inflicted.
TechRadar Pro has reached out to Amazon to confirm these comments, but the company did not immediately respond.
Amazon is not the only company facing problems in the Middle East – Fars News Agency. “The targeting of Amazon and Microsoft in these operations has dealt a serious blow to the enemy’s technological and informational infrastructure,” the Telegram post reads.
As for future plans, it is unclear how the two companies will go about regional investments. AWS had committed to spend US$5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia to launch a new cloud region, while Microsoft is planning a much larger investment of US$15.2 billion in the UAE between 2023 and 2029.
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