“There is a Syrian guy staying here,” said Panjali Zadeh Akbar with clear excitement in his voice. “We don’t see a lot of Syrians.”

It was early April 2011 and we were in Akbar’s guesthouse in the ancient desert trading city of Bam, in Iran’s far southeast. The Middle East was giddy with the early triumphs of the Arab Spring. Long-serving dictators who had ruled by fear had been toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, and for those in Libya and Yemen days already appeared numbered.