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Information gotten and analyzed 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 countries rely greatly on American business 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 facilities tracked there is American. Iran, on the other hand, seems an exceptional case among all the region's nations, as it relies completely on a 100% local cloud ecosystem. 89cloud centers across 22 countries 35%American companies' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf dependence on U.S.

Click on any indicate view information about the center, including the operating company, its nationality, and the year it was launched. Utilize the filters to concentrate on a specific nationality, or look 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 couple of years, cloud service centers have actually shifted from a "technical alternative" for reducing server expenses into critical infrastructure for the state and the economy: e-government websites, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of huge data, expert system, and more. The recent Iran war (2026) exposed a new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes harmed Amazon AWS cloud service data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering disruptions and service blackouts.

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

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 explicitly forces communications and computing provider to maintain and divulge customer information within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it lies within or outside the United States" validating the point above. (Click an image to view it complete size.) This reliance likewise intersects with the context of cross-border intelligence event under frameworks such as FISA Section 702, as presented by U.S

At the very same time, experts called by "Arabi Post" alert of the threats of focusing agreements with American cloud company, and of the impact of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security. Between issues over sovereignty and the market's requirement for ready-made facilities, the significance of information localization policies and the limits of cross-border data flows is growing, as talked about in worldwide reports such as those by the OECD.

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citizens or locals who interact with people or organizations in those nations where data centers operated by American business store the information of those nations and their people. To understand the scope of this threat, it is required 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 gain access to data stored in data centersthe large-scale infrastructure used by companies to store and process informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be required to inform the federal government of the nation concerned that there is a legal basis engaging access to that data.

The U.S. federal government could likewise punish or target any U.S. resident who participates in monetary deals with that country or sends money transfers to individuals there. Abu Al-Saad also says that if a dispute were to happen between that country and Washington, the United States might suspend its data storage services for that nation and justify 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 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 known as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security firms. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the capability to force major innovation companies to hand over sensitive data associated with people or nations. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open data records coming from users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or somewhere else, while "imposing a rigorous nondisclosure order that avoids the technology company from alerting the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has occurred.