Satellite Imagery Confirms Iranian Missiles Hit Amazon's Bahrain Data Center
Claire Weston
Multiple satellite sources confirm Iranian missiles struck two Amazon data centers in Bahrain. AWS Middle East services have been offline for months — cloud infrastructure is now a strategic military target.
What did the satellites actually show?
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released high-resolution satellite images via state media Tasnim, showing visible damage at Amazon facilities in Zalaq and Askar, Bahrain.
Bloomberg independently verified the damage using European Space Agency Sentinel-2 imagery. Analyst Adam Farrar confirmed "both sites show signs of damage" — timing and location match Iran's images.
This means → this is not one-sided propaganda: two independent satellite sources corroborate each other. The damage is confirmed.
Why target data centers?
An IRGC spokesman said the strikes hit "critical information-processing assets of the enemy," citing Amazon's support for U.S. military operations.
ACLED — the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project — logged four separate strikes: Zalaq on July 22 and 24; the Batelco facility in Askar hosting AWS cloud infrastructure on July 18 and 21.
In plain terms = Bahrain hosts America's primary naval base in the region. Data centers sit alongside military installations — adversaries see them as the same class of target.
How long has AWS Middle East been down?
As early as March, Amazon warned of prolonged outages after drones damaged three facilities in the Middle East.
In April, Amazon declared its Bahrain data-center cluster unavailable and told customers to restore from backups at other locations. It has refused to comment on damage since.
This means → the outage is not a matter of days — it has exceeded four months counting from March, with no official recovery timeline.
The fighting paused — what now?
The U.S. and Iran largely stopped exchanging fire last Friday, after roughly two weeks of daily attacks.
Amazon, Bahrain's National Communications Centre, the U.S. Department of Defense, and U.S. Central Command have all declined to comment.
This reflects a larger shift: cloud infrastructure is moving from "civilian asset" to strategic target in military conflict. When AWS Middle East comes back online remains the core uncertainty for the market.
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