Iranian forces have struck the headquarters facility of Batelco, Bahrain’s largest telecommunications operator, in what multiple reports describe as a direct attack on the Hamala site that also hosts Amazon Web Services infrastructure supporting cloud services across the Gulf region.
The strike, reported on 2 April, follows Iran’s public announcement one day earlier that it would begin targeting US technology companies operating in the Middle East, naming 18 firms including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Intel, IBM, Tesla, Oracle, Nvidia and G42. The Batelco-AWS facility appears to be the first confirmed strike executed under that explicit threat, marking a qualitative escalation from the earlier March attacks on AWS data centres, which Iran framed primarily as responses to US military operations.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry confirmed civil defence teams were extinguishing a fire at a company facility. Reports from multiple regional outlets identified the site as the Batelco facility in Hamala, where AWS cloud infrastructure is co-located. The attack caused structural damage, disrupted power supplies and triggered water damage to fire suppression systems, according to available reporting, disabling parts of the facility. Banking, payment platforms, delivery applications and enterprise software services were affected across the region.
The strike is the third confirmed disruption to AWS Bahrain operations since the conflict began on 28 February, when Iranian drone attacks first hit AWS-linked facilities in the UAE and Bahrain. AWS confirmed the previous week that its Bahrain region had been “disrupted.” The pattern across all three incidents — targeting co-location facilities inside the infrastructure of named Gulf telecom operators — indicates a deliberate strategy of using regional operators’ physical infrastructure as the attack vector against hyperscaler cloud services.
Batelco operates as a subsidiary of Batelco Group, now rebranded as Beyon, which holds the dominant fixed and mobile market position in Bahrain and has been expanding across the wider Gulf enterprise connectivity market.
Editor’s Note: The naming of specific US technology companies followed within 24 hours by a strike on infrastructure co-located with one of those companies removes any ambiguity about intent. For operators across the Gulf that host hyperscaler infrastructure — including stc, Etisalat and Ooredoo — the Batelco strike will accelerate conversations already underway about the liability and security obligations of co-location arrangements with US cloud providers in a wartime environment.
