This assumes you have already configured the aws command line tool. If not, check out my article on Getting Started with the AWS CLI.

Let's say you have a user that has not been granted permission to do something, such as using the aws s3api list-buckets command to return the list of S3 Buckets that have been created. Perhaps Access Denied is returned.

~]$ aws s3api list-buckets --profile johndoe
An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the ListBuckets operation: Access Denied

The aws iam list-attached-user-policies command can be used to list the Permission Policies attached to a user. Check out my article Permission Policy vs Trust Policy. Perhaps john.doe does not have any Permission Policies attached yet.

~]$ aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name john.doe
{
    "AttachedPolicies": []
}

Or does not have a Permission Policy attached that allows S3:ListBuckets.

]$ aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name john.doe
{
    "AttachedPolicies": [
        {
            "PolicyName": "ElasticLoadBalancingFullAccess",
            "PolicyArn": "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ElasticLoadBalancingFullAccess"
        },
        {
            "PolicyName": "AmazonS3FullAccess",
            "PolicyArn": "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonS3FullAccess"
        }
    ]
}

One option would be to use the aws iam attach-user-policy command to attach a policy john.doe.

aws iam attach-user-policy --user-name john.doe --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess

Or, perhaps it makes sense to use the aws iam create-role command to create a role.

aws iam create-role --role-name my-role --assume-role-policy-document file://my.json

And then use the aws iam attach-role-policy command to the role.

aws iam attach-role-policy --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess --role-name my-role

And then update your ~/.aws/config file with a profile that contains the Amazon Resource Number (ARN) of my-role. This assumes that profile "staging" exists in ~/.aws/credentials.

[profile assume_my_role]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/my-role
source_profile = staging
region = us-east-1
output = json

Now, john.doe should be able to use the aws s3api list-buckets command with --profile assume_my_role instead of --profile johndoe so that john.doe switches to my-role, which has the ReadOnlyAccess policy.

~]$ aws s3api list-buckets --profile johndoe
{
    "Buckets": [
        {
            "Name": "my-bucket-abcdefg",
            "CreationDate": "2023-06-02T02:22:19+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "Owner": {
        "DisplayName": "jane.doe",
        "ID": "ab0e0123456789103a77c82240d5c1234567891cc325c65b5c77712345643743"
    }
}