Iran retaliated against US and Israeli airstrikes by launching a counterattack against the country where US military bases are located south of the Persian Gulf. AWS reported that an AWS data center in the UAE was struck by an object, caught fire, and experienced a power outage. This article will introduce the computing power deployment of the Arab Gulf countries and the new form of warfare where cloud centers and AI computing power have become strategic resources.
Gulf computing power strategy takes shape: UAE, Saudi Arabia, and MGX's multi-billion dollar deployment.
The perception that Arab countries rely solely on oil is outdated. In recent years, they have been investing heavily in data centers and cloud infrastructure, with the core goal of becoming an AI computing power hub connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is currently one of the most mature computing power markets in the Gulf region. Khazna Data Centers, integrated by G42 and telecom operator e&, has a planned capacity of over 300MW, making it one of the largest data center operators in the Middle East.
AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle have all established or expanded cloud regions. AWS has a separate region within the UAE, and the data center that caught fire after being struck by an object was one of the UAE data centers. Microsoft has also announced a $15 billion investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in the UAE, and Nvidia is seeking licenses to export advanced GPUs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Bahrain was one of the first regions AWS established in the Middle East, while Saudi Arabia is using state capital to drive the construction of hyperscale data centers, engaging in an "AI infrastructure race" with the UAE. Both countries have invested billions of dollars in AI data centers and cloud infrastructure; Saudi Arabia's planned data center capacity (MW) leads other Middle Eastern countries. Major cloud service providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Microsoft Azure) all have a presence in Saudi Arabia, serving MENA and some traffic from Africa and South Asia.
The ghost chief Tahnoon acts as a go-between for Sam Altman, CZ, and the government.
One of the most crucial financial players in this wave of computing power armament is MGX. MGX is an AI and infrastructure investment fund established in Abu Dhabi, considered one of the UAE's sovereign wealth funds. It manages numerous technology investments, including AI and cryptocurrency, and previously invested $2 billion in the Binance exchange. Its leader, Tahnoon, is the younger brother of the UAE president and also serves as National Security Advisor. He controls a vast capital network spanning AI, energy, surveillance technology, and sovereign investments, with a total size exceeding $1.3 trillion.
( Wall Street Journal: UAE royal family member controls nearly half of Trump's cryptocurrency WLFI )
During the Biden administration, Tahnoon's efforts to acquire US AI chips were repeatedly thwarted, primarily due to Washington's concerns that the technology could be diverted to China via G42. Even though G42 claimed to have severed ties with Chinese companies in 2023, these concerns have never been completely eliminated.
MGX is also an investor in OpenAI. In 2025, when Abu Dhabi announced the Stargate UAE data center project, Altman publicly stated regarding Stargate UAE: "Sheikh Tahnoon has been a great supporter of OpenAI, a true believer in AGI, and a dear personal friend."
Iran attacks data center: AWS UAE catches fire, Bahrain and UAE connection anomalies.
Yesterday, AWS officially stated that an AWS data center in the UAE caught fire after being struck by an object, causing a continuous power outage and forcing some services to shut down or migrate their load. AWS Bahrain and UAE regions experienced connectivity issues and increased error rates, and AWS officially advised enterprise customers to temporarily switch to other regions.
The scope of impact includes:
- E-commerce and SaaS platforms
- Fintech services
- Regional government and enterprise cloud systems
In the AI era, data centers will become a key target for crackdowns.
A 2026 industry report estimates that the installed capacity of data centers in the Middle East will reach approximately 1.82 GW in 2025 and 2.84 GW in 2030. If we include both existing and planned computing power, the target capacity for the Middle East over the next five years is approximately 6.1 GW. Currently, the total IT power consumption of global data centers is typically estimated in the tens of GW range, with the Middle East's 1.8–2.x GW representing about 3–5% of the global total, and most of this is concentrated in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries. Therefore, from the perspective of global computing power supply, the impact of this airstrike is still limited.
Global AI computing power remains concentrated in North America and Europe, while large-scale AI super data centers in the Gulf countries are mostly still under construction. Major cloud service providers diversify risk through multi-AZ and multi-Region architectures during the design phase, and AWS has also explicitly recommended that customers use other regions in its incident statement, demonstrating that critical cloud-native customers can maintain their business even with failovers that are several hours behind schedule (although costs and latency increase).
From the 2019 attack on Saudi Aramco oil facilities to the 2024 Red Sea undersea cable disruption, and now the UAE data center incident, the battlefield is gradually shifting from energy infrastructure to digital infrastructure. While it remains unclear whether Iran deliberately targeted the data center, it is certain that with the advent of the AI era, computing power has become a new generation of strategic resources. If conflicts escalate in the future, key computing power and connectivity nodes such as data centers, cloud service providers, and undersea cables will almost inevitably become targets of attack.
This article, "Iranian Airstrikes in the UAE, AWS Data Center Catches Fire! Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in AI Computing Power Becomes a Strategic Resource," first appeared on ABMedia, a ABMedia .
