Evaluating Cloud Platforms for the Middle East

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

In the Gulf countries, more than 53% of the cloud facilities tracked there is American. Iran, on the other hand, appears to be an extraordinary case among all the area's countries, as it relies totally on a 100% regional cloud environment. 89cloud centers throughout 22 nations 35%American companies' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf dependence on U.S.

Click on any point to view information about the center, consisting of the running business, its citizenship, and the year it was released. Use the filters to concentrate on a particular nationality, or look for a specific center or country. 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 shifted from a "technical alternative" for minimizing server expenses into critical facilities for the state and the economy: e-government portals, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of huge data, artificial intelligence, and more. But the recent Iran war (2026) exposed a new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as happened when Iranian drone strikes harmed Amazon AWS cloud service data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering disruptions and service interruptions.

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

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 explicitly obliges communications and calculating service companies to preserve and reveal subscriber information within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it lies within or outside the United States" confirming the point above. (Click an image to view it full size.) This dependence also intersects with the context of cross-border intelligence gathering under structures such as FISA Section 702, as provided by U.S

At the same time, experts contacted by "Arabi Post" alert of the threats of concentrating agreements with American cloud service suppliers, and of the impact of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security. In between concerns over sovereignty and the marketplace's requirement for ready-made infrastructure, the significance of data localization policies and the limits of cross-border data streams is growing, as talked about in international reports such as those by the OECD.

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people or locals who connect with individuals or companies in those nations where data centers run by American business store the information of those nations and their citizens. To understand the scope of this risk, it is needed 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 kept in data centersthe massive facilities used by companies to store and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities may be required 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 also punish or target any U.S. resident who engages in monetary deals with that nation or sends money transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad likewise says that if a disagreement were to happen in 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, including financial and banking services. In the context of the security dangers connected to countries' dependence on American information centers, another point also emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad thinks about the most essential and most dangerous: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool called "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security agencies. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the ability to force significant technology business to hand over delicate information associated with residents or nations. Washington could, for instance, force Amazon to open data records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or elsewhere, while "imposing a stringent nondisclosure order that prevents the technology company from informing the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has actually happened.