AWS Data Centre in Bahrain Damaged by Iranian Attack

KOMPAS.com – A cloud computing server facility owned by the US company Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Bahrain was reported to have sustained damage on Wednesday (1/4/2026). According to a Financial Times report, the damage was caused by a missile attack reportedly carried out by Iran, amid rising tensions in the ongoing Middle East conflict. Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior stated that it had worked to extinguish the fire resulting from the attack. However, they have not disclosed the identity of the affected company, the number of casualties, or the extent of the damage. This attack occurred approximately one day after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared it would target several major US technology companies operating in the Middle East. In an official statement released by Iranian military media Sepah News, the IRGC claimed that at least 18 companies were suspected of involvement in planning and tracking US military strike targets amid the ongoing conflict. Several tech giants on the list include Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Nvidia, Oracle, Tesla, HP, Intel, Cisco, Boeing, and IBM. Amazon was reportedly not on this list. In addition, the IRGC listed G42 as the sole non-US entity on the list. G42 is an artificial intelligence company consortium from the United Arab Emirates. In a previous statement, the IRGC warned these companies that they would face attacks in retaliation for what they described as actions against Iran. The IRGC also urged employees of the related companies to leave their workplaces and advised residents within a one-kilometre radius of the companies’ facilities in the Middle East to evacuate to safe locations. This is not the first such threat. In early March, Iranian drone attacks were reported to have damaged several Amazon data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. This series of incidents marks the increasing risk to technological infrastructure in the Middle East, particularly data centres and cloud computing services. The situation has also sparked concerns about the sustainability of technology investments, especially in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, in the region, as summarised by KompasTekno from Gizmodo.