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Information gotten and evaluated by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and regions (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa exposed that the area's nations rely heavily on American companies for cloud services. The information shows the presence of around 31 American centers, the majority of them in Gulf countries, while the variety of centers owned by Chinese companies reached about 7.

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

Click any point to see information about the center, including the running company, its nationality, and the year it was released. Use the filters to concentrate on a particular nationality, or search for a particular center or country. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a few years, cloud service centers have actually moved from a "technical choice" for reducing server expenses into important facilities for the state and the economy: e-government websites, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of big information, expert system, and more. The current Iran war (2026) exposed a new dimension: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering interruptions and service interruptions.

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But the significance of American and foreign companies does not stop at technical competitors or service quality; it extends to digital sovereignty and questions of control over data for these countries and their numerous delicate sectors. American companies are subject to U.S. laws managing lawful access to information, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limitations of judicial ask for data even when it is saved outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 explicitly obliges communications and calculating service companies to preserve and divulge subscriber information within their "belongings, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is situated within or outside the United States" verifying the point above., as presented by U.S

At the very same time, experts called by "Arabi Post" warn of the dangers of focusing contracts with American cloud service companies, and of the impact of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security.

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people or residents who connect with people or organizations in those nations where data centers run by American companies store the information of those countries and their people. To comprehend the scope of this danger, it is essential to first take a look at U.S. federal laws such as FISA Section 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to access information stored in information centersthe massive infrastructure used by business to store and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be needed to inform the government of the nation worried that there is a legal basis compelling access to that data.

The U.S. federal government might likewise punish or target any U.S. person who takes part in financial deals with that country or sends out money transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad also says that if a dispute were to take place between that nation and Washington, the United States could suspend its data storage services for that nation and justify doing so.

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This would impact all sectors, consisting of financial and banking services. In the context of the security risks connected to nations' dependence on American data centers, another point also emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad considers the most essential and most unsafe: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool understood as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security agencies. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the capability to force major technology companies to turn over sensitive information associated with residents or countries. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open information 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 informing the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has actually happened.