This conflict feels personal. My father was an engineer who worked in Iran in the 1970s, and I spent part of my early childhood there. I was too young to remember much, but I recall the suddenness of leaving — finding a circuitous route back to India as the revolution took hold. Decades later, my parents still speak of Iran with warmth and texture: the sophisticated culture, the food, the genuine friendships. The Middle East has never been an abstraction to me.
These early experiences, along with years building businesses in Asia during the height of its globalisation, shaped how I think about regions in flux — and how quickly they can be misjudged from the outside.
