Satellite images have revealed new damage to Amazon data centers in the Middle East along with at least one crucial Saudi oil facility, following missile and drone attacks by Iran and its Houthi allies.
The images from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites provide evidence of a widening war as the United States and several Gulf states exchange military strikes with Iran, the Houthi faction in Yemen, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Such satellite images also offer independent verification of claimed war damage, despite the US government having pressured US commercial firms and even Europe to restrict satellite imagery of the region.
Three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were already previously damaged by Iranian drone strikes on March 1. Those earlier attacks stuck Amazon with months of expected repairs and forced Amazon Web Services customers in the Middle East to migrate workloads to other cloud regions.
But on July 21, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement saying it had once again attacked and “destroyed” Amazon data centers in Bahrain by using cruise missiles. The statement was shared through the Iranian state media outlet Fars News Agency and reported by Western media outlets such as CNBC.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps followed up by releasing high-resolution satellite images showing damage to two Amazon data centers located at the coastal towns of Zallaq and Askar in Bahrain. It was not immediately clear what satellite services Iran used, but the country has reportedly been making use of commercial imagery from Chinese satellites.
Analysts used imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites to verify signs of the strikes on the data centers but were unable to determine the extent of the damage, according to Bloomberg News. The news outlet reached out to Bahrain, the US military, and Amazon for comment but all declined to comment or did not respond.