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"The contract was eventually awarded to doMEn, d.o.o., a Montenegrin joint venture (doing business as .Me Registry), whose partners include Afilias Limited, GoDaddy.com, Inc., and ME-net d.o.o."

It's operated by two US based companies.

.me is operated by Afilias, a US corporation.

Afilias is an Irish corporation, not a US one.

An Irish holding company. Actual technical registry operations are handled by Afilias USA, Inc. and subject to US law.

ICANN (the people in charge of DNS) is based in the US.

ICANN is not "in charge of DNS". IANA, part of ICANN, manages the root zone. That's it.

The top level domains are delegated to their respective organization. IANA could, in theory, re-delegate an entire top level domain, but everyone would notice and route around the problem.