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

In the Gulf nations, more than 53% of the cloud facilities tracked there is American. Iran, meanwhile, appears to be an exceptional case among all the area's nations, as it relies completely on a 100% local cloud ecosystem. 89cloud centers throughout 22 nations 35%American business' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf dependence on U.S.

Click any point to view details about the center, including the operating business, its nationality, and the year it was launched. Utilize the filters to concentrate on a particular 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 reducing server expenses into vital facilities for the state and the economy: e-government portals, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of huge data, expert system, and more. The recent Iran war (2026) revealed a new dimension: the cloud itself can be straight and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service information centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering disturbances and service outages.

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The significance of American and foreign business does not stop at technical competition or service quality; it extends to digital sovereignty and concerns of control over information for these nations and their different delicate sectors. American companies go through U.S. laws regulating lawful access to information, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limitations of judicial requests for information even when it is saved outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Section 2713 explicitly compels communications and calculating service suppliers to preserve and reveal customer data within their "ownership, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is situated within or outside the United States" verifying the point above., as provided by U.S

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

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citizens or citizens who connect with individuals or companies in those countries where information centers run by American companies save the information of those countries and their residents. To comprehend the scope of this risk, it is essential to initially analyze 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 information saved in data centersthe massive facilities used by companies to store and process informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be needed to notify the government of the nation worried that there is a legal basis engaging access to that information.

The U.S. government could also punish or target any U.S. person who engages in financial deals with that nation or sends money transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad also states that if a dispute were to occur between that nation and Washington, the United States might suspend its data storage services for that country and validate doing so.

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This would affect all sectors, consisting of financial and banking services. In the context of the security threats linked to countries' dependence on American data centers, another point likewise emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad thinks about the most essential and most unsafe: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool referred to as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security firms. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the ability to force significant technology companies to turn over delicate information connected to citizens or nations. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open information records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or in other places, while "enforcing a rigorous nondisclosure order that prevents the innovation business from notifying the Bahraini government or the targeted individuals that this gain access to has actually taken place.