IRGC Claims Cruise Missiles Destroyed Amazon's Bahrain Data Center
IRGC Claims It Destroyed Amazon's Bahrain Data Center
The IRGC announced a cruise missile strike on Amazon Web Services' Bahrain data center, marking the third attack on the facility this year. This retaliation targets commercial cloud infrastructure in response to US strikes on Iran's Darkhovin nuclear plant, signaling a dangerous escalation where civilian tech assets are treated as military objectives in the Gulf conflict.
By suppressing air-defense installations and striking the commercial target in a single coordinated operation, the IRGC treated a data center as a military-grade objective warranting the same operational planning it applied to radar and interceptor batteries.
- tailscaler2026
Despite the destruction, me-south-1 still has more nines than us-east-1
- input_sh
After this strike, the only AWS region in the ME that remains operational is the one in Tel Aviv (a bit ironic if you ask me).
UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.
- Macha
Between this and the Wildberries depot strikes in the Ukraine war, I think it really highlights how much peace was required to make the centralisation we've experienced work.
- wartywhoa23
The disconnection of the world into isolated anclaves proceeds as planned.
- dhx
AWS's 3 data centres in me-south-1 are:
BAH53 (Manama): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1492345589
An adjoining substation to BAH53 had one of it's two main buildings damaged/destroyed about 2026-07-16 per https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-damage-to-data-center-power-substation-bahrain-jul-16th-2026-142024
Then about 2026-07-22 BAH53 itself was damaged/destroyed per https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-damage-to-amazon-web-services-bahrain-jul-22nd-2026-142112
Possibly the least defended of the three sites as there is no air/missile defence battery in between this site and Iran.
BAH54 (Zallaq): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1359931661
No media reports about this data centre being attacked previously. Possibly the safest of the three as there are at least two (probably three) air/missile defence batteries in between this site and Iran.
BAH55 (Hamala): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/956069872
Apparently the Batelco DC.1 data centre adjoining (and apparently critical to) BAH55 was damaged/destroyed about 2026-04-01 per https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk28nj0lrjo _or_ the adjoining substation to these two facilities was damaged/destroyed -- news articles are hard to follow as to what exactly might have been damaged and the extent of damage caused.
Middle ground for defence with one or two (maybe three) air/missile defence batteries between this site and Iran, depending on where drones/missiles are launched from.
If these data centres are rebuilt, you'd mayb […]
- Neil44
Shows unavailable, last status update 30th April
- weinzierl
Isn't an AWS region comprised of at least three data centers "many kilometers apart"[1]?
So, if the whole of me-south-1 (Bahrain) went down it means at least three buildings many kilometers apart must have been attacked.
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regio...
- rootsudo
1. Wow this is a headline.
2. It’s expected and war, and while war is not good, I wonder about data backups and succession planning for this.
3. It makes sense they would’ve had a fire drill and reviewed since it’s a capital investment, 6 months of war, at the same time Bahrain is considered stable, so I really wonder about the conversation around this and if there was any disaster planning with this scenario in mind.
4. If there wasn’t, I’m sure there is now across all regions of AWS.
This month has been for me, a uptick in unique headlines that I wouldn’t have thought would happen.
- pseingatl
My colleague in Dubai says that ATM's are all working so the claim that bank infrastructure is down may not be correct.
- throwaway836123
As someone who has lived most of his life in Iran, I ask those who find any alignment with the IRGC to please understand that it is a religiously fanatic military and terrorist group.
They are behind many atrocities in Iran and in the region including the situation in Gaza (partially). They also provided weaponry and support to Russia against Ukraine.