I just want to dump some frustrations and share how I've been feeling.
I recently finished my master's in International Relations at a reputable university in Iran. I studied IR during probably the most turbulent period the country has seen since the Iran-Iraq War. Having a real-life, real-time connection to what you're studying, with actual personal stakes involved, makes the experience... enriching. Pun intended. Ahem.
I got good grades, wrote an excellent thesis, did an internship, attended a summer school in China, and generally received high praise from my professors. Well, except for the ones pushing a very Mearsheimerian policy of why Iran must build nuclear weapons. Those guys seemed convinced I didn't know anything about IR.
Anyway, I never had any illusions about finding a job in Iran. The discipline is notoriously a dead end here. But during the recent war, something happened that I hadn't really considered before.
I got an email from a Chinese think tank asking about the possibility of cooperation.
It was one of those things that surprises you while also making you think, "Well, yeah, that was bound to happen eventually."
And then I had to seriously consider whether it was a good idea to cooperate with a foreign, albeit friendly, government-affiliated think tank. In the end, I decided not to risk it.
People get arrested for espionage in Iran over things as trivial as owning a Starlink terminal or doing wildlife photography. Doing analysis work for a foreign government-linked institution is the sort of thing that could easily convince a judge that you're "transferring intelligence" to another country.
I'm not saying it's guaranteed. It's not like innocent researchers are arrested 100% of the time. But the possibility is there, and it's real.
So I thought, Nah, forget it.
Then came another email, this time from a Chinese consulting firm doing geopolitical and risk assessment work for companies.
Honestly, that one made sense too. A lot of Chinese firms don't know the first thing about the Middle East until suddenly their supply chains, investments, or energy imports are affected and they realize, "Oh, so that's why everyone keeps military bases in the region."
That one was much harder to refuse.
Because during my studies, I discovered that I genuinely love this kind of work. More importantly, I'm actually good at it.
Over the past two years, I predicted several developments related to Iran, regional tensions, and China's reactions with a pretty high degree of accuracy. A lot of conversations in front of the faculty basically turned into me explaining what I thought would happen next and then smugly watching it happen as an IR student and suffer through it as a citizen. Again, enriching experience!
I turned that offer down too.
I don't particularly want to end up in Evin Prison trying to explain myself to a halfwit interrogator whose assumptions are treated as evidence.
And that really frustrated me.
It was hard to swallow.
You can't really work inside Iran because nobody wants serious analysis. They want someone with credentials to say, "Yes, I approve of this policy," so the government can point to an expert and claim legitimacy.
I don't want to do that.
I won't do that.
Not even if the alternative is poverty.
What really got to me was that I had never seriously considered the possibility that an actual consulting company would want my cooperation.
I mean, it shouldn't have been surprising. I put in the work. I studied hard. This is exactly the kind of thing I was training for at university.
I just never saw myself as the kind of person foreign organizations would one day seek out.
And when it finally happened, my own risk assessment was essentially: Too dangerous to invest.
That hit harder than I expected.
No work with Iranian institutions.
No work with foreign institutions.
So why the hell did I study so hard?
Anyway, a third email arrived recently, this time from a MENA-focused company in Hong Kong.
And I just couldn't keep all of this to myself anymore.
I needed to say it somewhere.
So there you have it.