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Information acquired and examined by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and regions (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa revealed that the area's countries rely heavily on American companies for cloud services. The data shows the presence of around 31 American centers, many of them in Gulf nations, while the number of centers owned by Chinese business 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 a remarkable case amongst all the area's countries, as it relies completely on a 100% local cloud environment. 89cloud centers throughout 22 nations 35%American business' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf reliance on U.S.

Click on any point to see details about the center, consisting of the running business, its citizenship, and the year it was released. Utilize the filters to concentrate on a specific nationality, or look for a particular 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 shifted from a "technical choice" for reducing server costs into critical 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) revealed a new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as occurred when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service information centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing disruptions and service failures.

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

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 clearly compels interactions and computing service providers to maintain and divulge subscriber data within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is located within or outside the United States" validating the point above., as presented by U.S

At the same time, specialists contacted by "Arabi Post" alert of the dangers of focusing contracts with American cloud service providers, and of the impact of "foreign jurisdiction" on personal privacy and security.

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residents or residents who interact with people or organizations in those nations where data centers operated by American business save the information of those nations and their people. To understand the scope of this risk, it is needed to first examine 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 gain access to data saved in data centersthe massive infrastructure used by business to shop and process informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities may be needed to notify the government of the country concerned that there is a legal basis compelling access to that information.

The U.S. government could likewise punish or target any U.S. citizen who engages in monetary transactions with that nation or sends money transfers to individuals there. Abu Al-Saad also states that if a disagreement were to happen in between that country and Washington, the United States might suspend its information storage services for that nation and justify doing so.

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This would impact all sectors, including financial and banking services. In the context of the security risks linked to countries' dependence on American data centers, another point also emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad thinks about the most important and most dangerous: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool known as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security firms. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the ability to compel significant technology business to hand over delicate information connected to people or nations. Washington could, for instance, force Amazon to open information records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or elsewhere, while "imposing a stringent nondisclosure order that avoids the innovation business from alerting the Bahraini federal government or the targeted individuals that this access has actually taken place.