Amazon Confirms Extended AWS Outage in Dubai and Bahrain Following Iranian Strikes
Amazon has officially acknowledged a significant service disruption at its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers located in Dubai and Bahrain, attributing the outage to recent Iranian military strikes. According to an internal memo obtained by Big Technology, the company anticipates that these facilities will remain "unavailable for an extended period" due to the severity of the damage sustained.
Internal Memo Details Severe Impact and Recovery Efforts
The internal communication, as reported by Big Technology, explicitly states that the AWS regions in Dubai and Bahrain are "impaired" and warns that services should not be expected to operate with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency. In response, Amazon has instructed its employees to deprioritize these regions and is actively working to reserve capacity to support customer migrations to unaffected areas.
Amazon emphasized in a blog post dated March 24, 2026, that the AWS Bahrain Region has been directly impacted by the ongoing conflict. The company is collaborating with local authorities to ensure personnel safety while assisting customers in shifting their workloads to alternative AWS Regions. A substantial number of clients have already successfully transitioned their applications to other global locations.
Ongoing Conflict and Repeated Attacks on Tech Infrastructure
The disruptions occur as the US-Israel-Iran war enters its sixth week, with Amazon's facilities in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates suffering multiple hits. Notably, a strike on April 1 caused a fire at the Bahrain site, exacerbating the damage. Amazon has stated that there is currently no timeline for when normal operations will resume in Dubai (DXB) and Bahrain (BAH).
This incident follows threats last month from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which warned of attacks on other major US tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple. The IRGC declared that these firms should anticipate the destruction of their units in retaliation for assassinations in Iran, highlighting the escalating risks to global technology infrastructure amid geopolitical tensions.
Broader Implications for Cloud Services and Customer Response
The prolonged outage underscores the vulnerabilities of cloud service providers in conflict zones and the critical need for robust disaster recovery plans. Amazon is urging all customers with workloads in the affected regions to migrate to other locations promptly, as the situation continues to evolve. The company's focus remains on minimizing operational footprints to facilitate customer transitions and ensuring service continuity through its global network.
As recovery efforts proceed, the tech industry watches closely, with this event serving as a stark reminder of how geopolitical conflicts can directly impact digital economies and essential services worldwide.
