IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center • Hacker News Board

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#491

Post by shihab » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #423

ifwinterco wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you live in the northern US and Canada signs a deal with China to put air bases with Chinese missiles just north of the US border. Would that be fine? Or would that cause a lot of tension with Canada and make them involved in a US-China conflict?

USA would look very bad if they started bombarding Canada over that, yes. Not even Russia does that. They protest but they haven't started bombarding neutral countries over such things yet. You don't see Ukraine bombarding Belarus either, even though Belarus is full of Russian bases.

US burnt almost entire latin american down last century because "can't have communism in our backyard", even though these countries are quite far geographically than Bahrain is to Iran. Besides, under every international law about neutrality, Bahrain/Kuwait/UAE none of them are neutral.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#492

Post by culi » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

sdsd wrote: post #391

culi wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah Cash payments, rental subsidies, mortgage discounts, free healthcare, free tuition, tax credits, tax exemptions, job placement, immediate citizenship, etc. All if you're of a certain ethnicity.

>All if you're of a certain ethnicity. Can Arab Jews make Aliyah?

Yes, Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews qualify. Hebrew ofc is a branch of Old Arab so one can argue all Jewish people are Arab.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#493

Post by giardini » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #425

giardini wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

laughing_man says "Yes, making a bomb is easy once you have the materials. Getting the materials is very difficult." Well, apparently they've had (lots of) the raw material for years. And they have training: all those Iranian science majors at universities during/after the Shah was deposed are candidates. They've had 40 years to study, play and worship. As a friend says, Pakistan got the bomb and if they can do it, a…

> Well, apparently they've had (lots of) the raw material for years. "raw material" != "material". While I assume they could've purified enough of the former into the latter by this point if they wanted to, it is a much much harder thing to do than to say. > Marie Curie purified plutonium all by herself before the turn of the century (albeit in minuscule amounts at high personal cost), so I have little confidence in…

Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!"

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=google....

ben_w: "You're taking a comic book plot device as evidence?"

I was telling a story about my early life! Get a grip! It was a lead-in to a)the Soviet doomsday device which may have been real and may still be around and b)to my early fright at the nasty side-effects of nuclear weapons.

ben_wL "The former easily wipes out a city; the latter messes up a building."

Indeed an understatement! The Chernobyl reactor is an accidental "dirty bomb". It FUed quite a large area: people don't do much picnicking in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_exclusion_zone.

Spare me talking about how large the Chernobyl reactor and how heavy its fuel rods are, etc. Fissionable material and fission by-products are generally toxic: spreading it around is devastating and difficult to correct. And the Iranians have lots of that kind of crap.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#494

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #478

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrongly flagged dead (like a lot of comments get on these Iran threads): know-how 1 hour ago [dead] | parent | next [–] Iran has been killing Americans and Israeli since the 1970s. Read a history book.

Swipes and personal attacks (in the flagged comment) violate HN guidelines. It would have been ... better ... without the 2nd sentence.

Correction, dead, not flagged. Account is apparently banned, as mikestew notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047910>.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#495

Post by mmooss » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #272

mmooss wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can mind their own business, but they chose not to. Neither the US nor Iran can do that. Iran and the US are in very different positions: The US is the status quo power; they and their allies dominate the Mideast and Persian Gulf, and are hostile to Iran for geopolitical (control of region), economic (oil), and religious (Shiite-Sunni) reasons. There is a long history demonstrating that - Iran would be crazy t…

I don't understand what it means to say that the US is hostile to Iran because of "religious (Shiite-Sunni) reasons". Are you saying that the US backs one of the two major Islamic branches?

I was a little imprecise, sorry. One reason that the predominantly Sunni countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have conflict with Iran is because Iran is predominantly Shiite and the center of the Shiite world (as I understand it; I don't know a lot about it). For other reasons mentioned, the US is allied with many of the predominantly Sunni countries in the Persian Gulf; I doubt the US has any direct interest in Shiite or Sunni.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#496

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

trhway wrote: post #327

input_sh wrote: post #60

After this strike, the only AWS region in the ME that remains operational is the one in Tel Aviv (a bit ironic if you ask me). UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.

AMZN could have for example bought a "Gepard" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard ) - easily shoots down cruise missiles and drones. Just a couple millions would have saved billions.

Dog-pod grids:

https://diamond-age.bib.bz/security-measures-adopted-by-atla...>

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#497

Post by sph » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

throwaway836123 wrote: post #288

swat535 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iranian here, I have no love for the IRGC but I am glad they are keeping Americans from destroying our country right now. We don't need Americans to "save us", we have 90M intelligent people and can resolve our own issues. It would be great if the West started respecting the sovereignty of other nations. I have a hard time sympathizing with the Pahlavi supporters cheering the bombing of our home.

My comment wasn’t about the West saving us, nor was it about supporting Pahlavi (which I personally did, but of course I’m against the continued bombing of my country). What I’m saying is that supporting one of the biggest terrorist group in the world by the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a grave mistake . It legitimizes one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reasons behind the current situation in…

> one of the biggest terrorist group in the world

Clearly the biggest tell that you are anything but Iranian. You might dislike the regime but no one calls their own government a “terrorist group”, a term reserved for foreign agents.

Stop astroturfing behind a throwaway, you coward.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#498

Post by toast0 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

gpt5 wrote: post #291

swat535 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iranian here, I have no love for the IRGC but I am glad they are keeping Americans from destroying our country right now. We don't need Americans to "save us", we have 90M intelligent people and can resolve our own issues. It would be great if the West started respecting the sovereignty of other nations. I have a hard time sympathizing with the Pahlavi supporters cheering the bombing of our home.

I don't know if you realize - but the Americans have offered IRGC a pretty generous deal that essentially removes almost all sanctions in return to stop developing nukes, and the IRGC itself is escalating the situation, which could force America to bomb Iran again.

As an American, I don't see how you can have serious negotiations with the US at the moment. You negotiate to an agreement, and then the terms change after agreement is announced. Or you show up to negotiations and your negotiation team is assassinated. Or your head of state is assasinated or kidnapped.

If you do get to a deal, there's no permanance and no means of enforcement.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#499

Post by nazgulnarsil » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #462

palmotea wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these data centres are rebuilt, you'd maybe expect them to be rebuilt in new locations behind existing _permanent_ (and seemingly quite expensive) air/missile defence batteries in Bahrain I've seen data centers that were built to withstand an aircraft impact (they were located on a major airport flight path). I wonder if they'd rebuild these to that standard or something even stronger, given these attacks. It pr…

> It probably wouldn't help much against ballistic missiles, but it might make it more resilient against drone attacks. I think the two kinds of attacks are so different that they require different defenses. Drones need not fly in straight lines. Data centers need ventilation, providing a path for drones. Putting grids in a ventilation shaft will stop the first drone, but a coordinated attack will use one drone to bl…

And presumably eventually those exhaust ports would be obfuscated, necessitating the stealing of plans to identify such vulnerabilities.

Re: IRGC claims it destroyed Amazon's Bahrain data center

#500

Post by carefulfungi » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

mupuff1234 wrote: post #440

carefulfungi wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even enough though. Ask the Canadians who signed the USMCA ( https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr... ). There's zero foundation for trust to uphold an international agreement even between US and its closest allies. Iran has no basis to believe any agreement will be legitimate or upheld.

So again, let's say the agreement doesn't hold - how exactly is that worse than before?

The previous agreement ended with the US killing the Ayatollah and other senior leaders, promoting regime change, and demanding unconditional surrender. Venezuela capitulated to the US and is now under US control. If Iran's leadership's goal is to survive and to maintain control of their country, they're likely to continue hostilities until they re-establish a deterrent. Worked for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

If you believe the US military, Iran has already lost the majority of its capital-intensive armaments and its nuclear program and its senior leadership. This means there are fewer strategic holdings now at risk. Iran knows it can't be effectively invaded. The regime loses control in two scenarios: (1) internal regime change; (2) diplomatic capitulation to US demands. Waiting out at least US mid-terms while continuing to threaten the strait and neighbor's infrastructure is quite possibly Iran's best decision tree path from the point of view of the regime.