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Data acquired and evaluated by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and areas (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa exposed that the area's nations rely greatly on American companies for cloud services. The data reveals the existence of around 31 American centers, most of them in Gulf nations, while the number of centers owned by Chinese companies reached about 7.

In the Gulf nations, more than 53% of the cloud infrastructure tracked there is American. Iran, meanwhile, seems an exceptional case amongst all the area's nations, as it relies entirely on a 100% local cloud environment. 89cloud centers across 22 countries 35%American companies' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf dependence on U.S.

Click on any indicate view details about the center, including the running company, its citizenship, and the year it was launched. Utilize the filters to concentrate on a specific nationality, or search for a specific center or nation. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a couple of years, cloud service centers have actually moved from a "technical option" for decreasing server costs into vital facilities for the state and the economy: e-government websites, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of huge information, artificial intelligence, and more. However the recent Iran war (2026) revealed a new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as happened when Iranian drone strikes harmed Amazon AWS cloud service information centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing disruptions and service blackouts.

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However the significance of American and foreign business does not stop at technical competition or service quality; it encompasses digital sovereignty and concerns of control over data for these countries and their various delicate sectors. American business undergo U.S. laws controling legal access to data, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limits of judicial ask for data even when it is stored outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 clearly forces interactions and calculating service suppliers to protect and disclose subscriber data within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is situated within or outside the United States" confirming the point above., as presented by U.S

At the same time, specialists gotten in touch with by "Arabi Post" alert of the threats of focusing agreements with American cloud service suppliers, and of the effect of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security.

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residents or residents who connect with individuals or companies in those nations where information centers operated by American companies keep the data of those countries and their citizens. To understand the scope of this threat, it is essential to initially take a look at U.S. federal laws such as FISA Area 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to access data saved in data centersthe massive facilities used by business to store and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities may be required to alert the government of the country concerned that there is a legal basis engaging access to that data.

The U.S. government could also punish or target any U.S. resident who participates in monetary transactions with that nation or sends cash transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad likewise states that if a dispute were to take place between that nation and Washington, the United States might suspend its data storage services for that country and justify doing so.

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This would affect all sectors, including financial and banking services. In the context of the security risks connected to countries' dependence on American information centers, another point likewise emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad thinks about the most important and most hazardous: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool called "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security companies. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the capability to compel major innovation business to turn over delicate information related to people or countries. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open data records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or in other places, while "imposing a rigorous nondisclosure order that avoids the innovation business from alerting the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has actually taken place.