Iran Strikes UAE AWS Data Centers, Testing Middle East AI Computing Ambitions

The UAE is channeling oil wealth through state-backed investors such as MGX and G42 into AI infrastructure. Stargate UAE, unveiled in May 2025, calls for a 5-gigawatt campus in Abu Dhabi, with OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA and others participating in its first 1-gigawatt cluster. The initiative is linked to the four-year, $500 billion Stargate project and has turned computing capacity, power and cloud infrastructure into national security assets.

On March 1, 2026, an Iranian drone offensive directly struck two AWS facilities in the UAE, while another facility in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby attack. Fire and damage to structures and power systems temporarily took two of the three availability zones in ME-CENTRAL-1 offline. AWS subsequently advised customers to back up their data and assess cross-region migration, underscoring how the Gulf’s AI investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars face pressure from both armed conflict and advanced-chip controls.