An Iranian news agency with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claims that drone strikes on three Amazon Web Services data centers were deliberate.

In comments on Telegram, first reported by The Register, the Fars News Agency said that the strikes happened due to the data centers "supporting the enemy's military and intelligence activities." The publication's claims could not be independently verified.

On Sunday, March 1, two AWS facilities in the UAE were directly struck by drones, and a third site in Bahrain was impacted by a "drone strike in close proximity" that damaged the facility.

The attacks have caused outages at its ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1 cloud regions, with service expected to take a while to fully resume given the severity of the damage.

The Bahrain data center is also home to AWS' Middle Eastern satellite ground station, which has also been impacted. The facility is the largest US data center in the region, Fars said.

"These operations have dealt a serious blow to the enemy's technological and information infrastructure," Fars added. "These attacks have caused power outages, fires, and structural damage."

However, while AWS's regions are struggling, both regions remain online with the UAE still operating a single Availability Zone. The company has recommended that customers shift workloads to other regions away from the conflict.

The company is used by the US Department of Defense and military contractors, as well as civilian businesses.

Following the data center attacks, the US and Israel targeted two Iranian data centers. It is not known if the strikes were retaliation or part of the broader destruction of critical infrastructure.

The war on Iran started on 28 February, when the US and Israel began coordinated joint attacks on cities and sites across the country. Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Gulf states and beyond, as the conflict risks spiralling into a greater disaster.