# AWS says Gulf data lost for good

> Six months after drone strikes hit AWS sites in Bahrain and the UAE, Amazon says some customer data is simply gone.
- Title: AWS says Gulf data lost for good · CNBC | Shortify
- Summary: Six months after drone strikes hit AWS sites in Bahrain and the UAE, Amazon says some customer data is simply gone. Cloud regions are physical buildings in…
- Keywords: aws, cloud, data centers, gulf, geopolitics, business, finance, data, lost, good, CNBC
- Source: CNBC — https://cnbc.com/2026/09/15/aws-cant-restore-service-to-bahrain-uae-6-months-after-iran-strikes.html
- Author: Annie Palmer
- Published: 2026-09-15T19:04:46+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: aws, cloud, data centers, gulf, geopolitics, business, finance
## Six months, no recovery
Amazon Web Services told customers Tuesday it cannot restore access to cloud facilities in Bahrain and parts of the UAE, more than half a year after drone strikes damaged the sites.
## The damage exceeded the design
On its health dashboard, AWS said the harm at multiple Bahrain sites went past what its services are built to survive. Data held only in that region is not coming back.

> we are unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in this region
## One UAE zone is gone too
A separate post said AWS also can't recover one of its UAE availability zones. Work continues on the two other affected zones there.
## First word since April
These posts are the first public update since April. In March, Amazon said two UAE data centers took direct drone hits and a Bahrain site was damaged by a nearby strike, and told customers to move workloads elsewhere.
## Iran claimed the strikes
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out the attacks, and that it hit the Bahrain facility over Amazon's support for the U.S. military.
## The Gulf AI buildout wobbles
UAE Stargate, the 5-gigawatt campus backed by OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle and Cisco, may now be split across the country, with underground sites, blast-resistant concrete and drone interceptors.
## Key takeaway

Cloud regions are physical buildings in real geography, and a war zone can make a region unrecoverable no matter what the SLA promised.