AWS Data Center in Bahrain Reportedly Damaged by Fire Following Iranian Attack
April 2, 2026
A critical Amazon Web Services data center in Bahrain has reportedly been impacted by fire, marking the latest escalation in the targeting of digital infrastructure amid ongoing regional hostilities. The incident underscores the growing vulnerability of cloud computing assets, which form the backbone of global business and government operations, to geopolitical conflict.
According to a report by the Financial Times citing a person familiar with the matter, the facility damaged is operated by AWS. This follows a statement on April 1 from Bahrain’s interior minister, who confirmed that defense forces were “extinguishing a fire in a facility of a company as a result of the Iranian aggression,” without naming the firm. AWS has declined to comment on the report.
If confirmed, this would be at least the fourth AWS facility targeted in recent months. The cloud provider’s infrastructure in the region has previously sustained damage from drone strikes in the United Arab Emirates and an earlier incident in Bahrain in early March. In response to the March disruptions, AWS informed customers it was “waiving all usage-related charges in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region for March 2026,” applying the credit automatically to affected accounts, as reported by The Register. The company later clarified that no customer data was deleted and remains available upon request.
The alleged attack occurs in a context where digital and physical assets of U.S. companies have been explicitly threatened. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recently publicly identified 18 major U.S. technology firms in the Middle East as “legitimate targets,” though AWS was notably absent from that list, potentially because it had already been subjected to attacks. The conflict has also disrupted internet services within Iran itself, where a government-imposed communications blackout has persisted for over 32 consecutive days, severely limiting domestic connectivity.
For the global data center industry, these repeated incidents highlight a stark new reality: cloud infrastructure is now on the front lines of state-level conflict. The targeting of these facilities poses significant risks to business continuity, data sovereignty, and regional digital economies, forcing enterprises to reevaluate redundancy strategies and geographic risk assessments for their critical workloads.
Source: datacenterdynamics
AWS Data Center in Bahrain Reportedly Damaged by Fire Following Iranian Attack
