Satellite imagery has added outside evidence that Iran Amazon data centers in Bahrain were hit again, after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it attacked AWS facilities with cruise missiles. Bloomberg News reported that analysts using Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 images verified signs of strikes at Amazon sites, although they could not determine how badly the facilities were damaged.
The latest evidence matters because the war is now reaching cloud infrastructure and energy export routes, two systems that customers and markets tend to notice when they break. A data center runs on power, cooling and packets, so blast damage does not need to flatten a building to disrupt service.
What happened to Amazon data centers in Bahrain?
On July 21, the IRGC said it had attacked and “destroyed” Amazon data centers in Bahrain, according to a statement carried by Iran’s Fars News Agency and reported by Western outlets including CNBC. The IRGC later released high-resolution satellite images that it said showed damage at two Amazon data centers near Zallaq and Askar, coastal towns in Bahrain.
It was not clear what satellite provider Iran used for those images. The Economist has reported that Iran has used commercial imagery from Chinese satellites during the war.
Bloomberg reported that Sentinel-2 imagery showed signs consistent with strikes at the sites. Bahrain, the U.S. military, and Amazon either declined to comment or did not respond to Bloomberg, according to the news outlet.
The attack followed earlier Iranian drone strikes on March 1 that damaged three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Those strikes left Amazon Web Services facing months of repairs and pushed AWS customers in the Middle East to move workloads to other cloud regions.
AWS’s public health dashboard for the affected region has not posted a new update since April 30. In that notice, AWS said the damaged data centers were “unable to reliably support customer operations” and recommended that customers move resources elsewhere. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.
Saudi oil sites are now part of the same pressure campaign
The cloud attacks may carry more symbolism than immediate economic force. The strikes claimed by the Houthi faction in Yemen against Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping lanes could have wider effects.
On July 20, the Houthis announced a naval blockade aimed at stopping Saudi oil exports through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea chokepoint used by tankers heading toward Asian markets. Since then, the group has attacked Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea and launched missiles and drones at Saudi refineries and the port of Yanbu, according to incident reports and Bloomberg’s reporting.
Saudi Arabia has been trying to send more oil through Yanbu as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted by the U.S.-Iran war. The Houthis, backed by Iran, control enough of Yemen’s coast to threaten vessels moving through Bab el-Mandeb.
Saudi officials and Saudi Aramco have not publicly detailed damage from the latest Houthi strikes. In that vacuum, traders and analysts have again turned to Sentinel-2. Bloomberg reported that satellite images showed one oil tank burning at Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery and a flare tower emitting smoke. Saudi Aramco later shut down the refinery, which normally can process 400,000 barrels per day, according to an Industrial Info Resources note reported by BOE Report.
Other Sentinel-2 images showed smoke from flare towers at the Abqaiq oil processing plant and Hawiyah gas processing plant after Houthi targeting, Bloomberg reported. Flaring can be a safety measure and does not by itself prove physical damage.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence said oil tanker transits through Bab el-Mandeb fell 40 percent in the week of July 20 to 26 compared with the prior week. Reuters also reported that the Houthis are considering fees for ships seeking safe passage, echoing Iran’s attempts to charge vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
With governments and companies saying little, satellite imagery has become the least-bad public audit trail for a war spreading across cloud regions, refineries, and shipping chokepoints. Copernicus remains free to use, though the European Union has agreed to delay new images of shipping lanes near the Strait of Hormuz by 24 hours.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
