Will the US-Iran conflict affect major tech companies? Amazon UAE data center hit and caught fire

Caixin March 2 News (Editor: Xiao Xiang) After the Saturday military operations launched by the United States and Israel, which resulted in the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei, Iran’s retaliatory attacks further escalated on Sunday. Reports indicate that multiple strikes targeted within Israel and several Gulf countries, and maritime incidents affected commercial shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, on Sunday morning local time, a major unexpected disruption occurred in the Middle East’s critical infrastructure: Amazon’s cloud computing division AWS announced that its data center in the UAE experienced a temporary power outage caused by an object hitting the facility, sparking a fire.

AWS did not directly confirm whether the incident was related to the Iranian attack but stated, “Around 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, one of our availability zones (mec1-az2) was affected by an object hitting the data center, causing sparks and a fire.”

According to the company’s website, “Availability zones” consist of one or more interconnected physical data centers. These zones are geographically separate and isolated within each AWS region.

Amazon stated in a release that its Middle Eastern data center region in the UAE experienced a power failure, leading to degraded internet connectivity and cloud service availability issues.

AWS reported that its ME-CENTRAL-1 region (mec1-az2)—a specific cluster of AWS data centers in the UAE—suffered operational disruptions due to “local power issues.” The company described the severity of the incident as “degraded performance.”

“Other AWS services are also experiencing increased error rates and latency when processing certain workflows. We have already rerouted traffic for most services. We recommend customers use other available zones within the ME-CENTRAL-1 region, as existing instances in other zones are not affected by this issue,” AWS wrote on its status page, adding, “We are actively restoring power and network connectivity and will begin restoring affected resources. We expect recovery efforts to take several hours.”

Below are maps of the UAE data center distribution:

And the distribution map of Middle Eastern communication cables:

Previously, the UAE Ministry of Defense announced, “The nation was openly attacked by Iranian ballistic missiles today. The UAE’s air defense forces responded effectively and intercepted multiple missiles.”

The UAE confirmed that, as a “routine precaution,” it has temporarily closed its airspace.

In addition to the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel also suffered retaliatory attacks by Iran—mainly because U.S. military facilities are located within these countries.

Industry experts suggest that a key issue now is whether this conflict is spilling over from military targets to civilian critical infrastructure. If that boundary has been crossed, considering the current tense geopolitical climate, U.S. large-scale cloud providers expanding in the UAE may need to reassess their investment plans.