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Data gotten and evaluated by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and areas (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa exposed that the region's nations rely greatly on American business for cloud services. The information reveals the existence of around 31 American centers, most of them in Gulf countries, while the number of centers owned by Chinese companies reached about 7.

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

Click any indicate see information about the center, including the running company, its nationality, and the year it was released. Utilize the filters to focus on a particular nationality, or search 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 shifted from a "technical option" for reducing server costs 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 information, expert system, and more. But the current 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 data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing disturbances and service failures.

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

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Area 2713 clearly compels communications and calculating provider to preserve and disclose customer data within their "belongings, custody, or control, despite whether it lies within or outside the United States" verifying the point above. (Click an image to view it full size.) This dependence likewise converges 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 gotten in touch with by "Arabi Post" alert of the dangers of concentrating agreements with American cloud service suppliers, 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 value of information localization policies and the limitations of cross-border data streams is growing, as discussed in worldwide reports such as those by the OECD.

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people or locals who connect with people or organizations in those nations where data centers run by American companies keep the data of those countries and their people. To understand the scope of this threat, it is needed to first analyze 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 information stored in information centersthe large-scale infrastructure used by companies to store and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be needed to alert the federal government of the country concerned that there is a legal basis engaging access to that data.

The U.S. federal government could also punish or target any U.S. person who participates in monetary deals with that country or sends cash transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad also states that if a disagreement were to take place in between that country and Washington, the United States might suspend its information storage services for that country and validate doing so.

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This would impact all sectors, consisting of financial and banking services. In the context of the security dangers connected to nations' 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 understood 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 major innovation business to turn over delicate data related to people or nations. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open data records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or somewhere else, while "imposing a strict nondisclosure order that prevents the innovation business from notifying the Bahraini federal government or the targeted individuals that this access has taken place.