AWS outages spread as Iran bombards targets across Gulf region

Steven

AWS outages spread as Iran bombards targets across Gulf region

Summary

Multiple AWS availability zones in the Middle East — notably in the United Arab Emirates (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3) and Bahrain (mes1-az2) — suffered outages or severe degradation after objects struck a UAE data centre and local power issues hit Bahrain. Amazon reports sparks and fire at one facility, with local authorities cutting power to contain the blaze. With two of three AZs impaired in the UAE region, services such as S3 experienced high failure rates for data ingest and egress. Recovery work is under way but may take at least a day due to repairs, cooling and power system checks, and coordination with local authorities.

The disruptions are linked to a wider wave of missile and drone strikes launched by Iran across the Gulf in retaliation for strikes on its territory. The spill-over has affected other cloud customers and SaaS providers in the area; Snowflake attributed regional service issues to the AWS outage. The story highlights how kinetic conflict in the Middle East is now directly impacting major cloud infrastructure.

Key Points

  • Objects struck an AWS facility in the UAE, causing sparks, fire and a precautionary local power cut.
  • Multiple AZs in the UAE became impaired (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3), exceeding the single-AZ fault tolerance S3 was designed for and causing high failure rates.
  • AWS’s Bahrain AZ (mes1-az2) suffered a separate localised power issue, also likely linked to regional strikes.
  • Service restoration could take a day or more because fixes require physical repairs, power/cooling restoration and safety checks with local authorities.
  • SaaS providers operating on AWS in the region — Snowflake among them — reported knock-on outages for their customers.
  • The incident underscores the exposure of global cloud and datacentre investments in the Middle East amid escalating regional conflict.

Context and relevance

This is important because physical warfare is now producing tangible outages in cloud infrastructure. The Middle East has become a major hub for datacentres and cloud expansion, with hyperscalers and local operators alike present across the region. Organisations using AWS Middle East regions (or relying on vendors hosted there) face real risk of service disruption when conflict reaches critical infrastructure. The episode reinforces the need for robust disaster recovery, multi-region resilience and clearer operational runbooks for conflict-driven outages.

Why should I read this?

Short version: if you run workloads or depend on services in AWS’s Middle East regions, this directly matters. Outages are spilling over into SaaS and enterprise stacks, and recovery isn’t instant. We skimmed the noise and pulled the essentials so you can act — check DR plans, evaluate cross-region failover, and flag affected vendors now.

Source

Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/amazon_outages_middle_east/