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Amazon faces months of repairs after drone strikes on data centers

May 2, 2026Last Updated: May 2, 2026

2 minutes read

FUJAIRAH, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - MARCH 05: Smoke rises after an explosion in the industrial zone, caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defence, according to the Fujairah media office on March 05, 2026, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. In recent days, Iran has fired drones and missiles toward the UAE and other Gulf states, following the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that began on February 28. Foreign ministers from the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) held an online meeting on March 1 and issued a statement saying they will take "all necessary measures" to defend their security and territory, condemning Iran's attacks as "heinous." (Photo by Christopher Pike/Getty Images)

Originally published on: May 1, 2026

▼ Summary

– Amazon Web Services customers in the Middle East will wait several more months for full recovery from Iranian drone strikes that damaged data centers in the UAE and Bahrain two months ago.
– The AWS dashboard stated the UAE and Bahrain cloud regions suffered damage from the Middle East conflict and cannot support customer applications.
– Billing operations for the affected regions are suspended while restoration takes place, following Amazon’s waiver of all usage charges for March 2026.
– AWS recommended customers migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore inaccessible resources.
– Some customers, like Dubai’s Careem app, quickly resumed operations by migrating to other data center servers overnight.

Amazon’s cloud division has confirmed that full recovery from damage inflicted by Iranian drone strikes on its Middle Eastern data centers will take several more months, extending the timeline to nearly half a year from the initial attack. The strikes, which occurred two months ago, hit three Amazon facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, causing significant disruptions to cloud services in the region.

An April 30 update on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) dashboard stated that the company’s UAE and Bahrain cloud regions “suffered damage as a result of the conflict in the Middle East,” rendering them unable to support customer applications. The update also noted that “relevant billing operations are currently suspended while we restore normal operations,” a process that “is expected to take several months.” This language indicates that Amazon will continue to waive charges for AWS customers in the affected regions,ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1,after initially forgoing all usage-related fees for March 2026, a move estimated to have cost the company $150 million.

To mitigate the impact, AWS has “strongly” recommended that customers migrate their resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to recover any “inaccessible resources.” Some clients have already managed to restore services quickly. For example, Careem, a Dubai-based super app offering ride-hailing, household services, and food and grocery delivery, successfully transitioned to other data center servers overnight, allowing it to return online without extended downtime.

The prolonged recovery timeline underscores the vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure amid regional conflicts, as Amazon works to repair physical damage and resume normal operations across its Middle Eastern data centers.

(Source: Ars Technica)