Ansible: read remote file

You can try the 'fetch' module, which will retrieve the key file to a destination path on localhost:

fetch: 
  src: ".ssh/{{item.value.file}}" 
  dest:"/tmp/ssh_keys/{{item.value.file}}"
  flat: yes
with_dict: "{{sshConfiguration}}" 

Either run with the --diff flag (outputs a diff when the destination file changes) ..

ansible-playbook --diff server.yaml

or slurp it up ..

- name: Slurp hosts file
  slurp:
    src: /etc/hosts
  register: slurpfile

- debug: msg="{{ slurpfile['content'] | b64decode }}"

Note that when this question was asked, the following solution was acceptable. Later versions of Ansible may provide a better solution to solve this problem.

As you said, all lookups are on localhost. But all of them can be done on remote by using shell and register. Can you tell what exactly you are trying to do? just an example.

  - shell: cat "{{remote_file}}"
    register: data

  - shell: ......
    with_xxxx: