AWS Confirms Permanent Data Loss After Iranian Drone Strikes

Amazon Web Services announced that it cannot restore access to customer data hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates following a series of Iranian drone and missile strikes. The attacks, which occurred between March 1 and July 24, 2026, were carried out in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

In Bahrain, the damage spanned all three availability zones, exceeding the resilience design of the region's multi-zone services and rendering data hosted exclusively there irretrievable. In the United Arab Emirates, data hosted exclusively in one of three availability zones, identified as mec1-az2, is permanently lost. AWS continues recovery efforts for resources in two other UAE zones, though replacing the damaged infrastructure is expected to take several months.

AWS has suspended billing in the affected areas and issued $150 million in customer credits. While most affected customers have re-established operations using remote backups or by migrating workloads to other regions, the company has not quantified the total volume of lost data or the number of impacted clients. AWS expects to provide a further update regarding the Bahrain region in early 2027.