When talking about Iran’s weapons, missiles are often mentioned. However, a fundamental leg of the country’s war machine is that of kamikaze drones. He Shahed-136 introduced in 2020, known as “loitering ammunition“, has been Iran’s strategic spearhead in the Middle East for years. Also a weapon that Russia has used in the Ukrainian war. After the beginning of the war against the United States and IsraelIran has directed these drones against its enemies. Not against bases, but against the two pillars that can do the most damage to the West.
Energy and data centers.
The drones. Since the Ukrainian war began, drones have proven to be the most fearsome weapon. There are more homemade ones, there are more sophisticated ones, but they all have something in common: power to destroythey can be operated at a good distance, they are very cheap, it is difficult to intercept them and the most advanced ones can be launched in swarms without risks for the operators.
But Shahed’s drones are not like a street DJI with explosives: they are drones with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers that are ideal for attacking very effectively. The key is in the price: they are thrown a lot and, even if many are intercepted, the cost of that interception is extremely favorable for the attacker. It is estimated that a drone costs about $20,000 while a interceptor missile The average is between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars. That relationship is making even the US is using them.
Ras Tanura. And it is these drones, and their variants, that Iran is using to attack critical infrastructure. Because they don’t have to hit the targets directly: they just need to land nearby or with the simple threat that they can reach that key infrastructure. We have an example in Ras Tanura. It is one of the largest oil refineries in the world that had to close its doors last Monday.
Aramco (the owner) made the decision after debris from intercepted drones fell near the facilities in Saudi Arabia. This caused a crisis in the crude oil market, with the barrel rising in price meteorically and with a lot of Overcrowded cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Data centers. But if power is critical, in the age of AI, data centers have also become a vital infrastructure. That is why these facilities are also in the crosshairs of an Iran that attackeddirectly, two installations of Amazon Web Services, or AWS, on March 1 and 2.
AWS presence
These are two data centers in the United Arab Emirates, while another Amazon facility in Bahrain also suffered some damage from a third attack. And specifically, computing on EC2 and cloud storage on both S3 and DynamoDB began to experience high error rates.
Amazon itself confirmed that “these attacks have caused structural damage, disrupted power to our infrastructure, and, in some cases, required fire suppression activities.” They point out that the water damaged part of the equipment and, as a consequence, their clients should migrate their workload to servers in other parts of the world because the recovery “will be prolonged.”
Market with anxiety. This has impacted the market, of course. If in the energy and crude oil segment it is evident that stopping a plant that ‘produces’ 550,000 barrels a day and cutting off a transit area through which passes 20% of the world’s oil has its consequences, which data centers becoming a target has also shaken the market.
Major companies related to AI, semiconductors and storage suffered the consequences this past Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. NVIDIA, Micron, Western Digital, ASML, Applied Materials, SK Hynix and Samsung traded lower on the worst day in recent months. It is not known if components can continue to be transported at the high rate we had if two of the busiest container shipping corridors of the planet suffer an alteration in traffic.
But don’t worry, they are already recovering so that the AI wheel keep turning in any way.
Images | Goal, Tasnim News Agency
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