I know quite a bit about money laundering systems. I am a programmer and built the fraud detection system for an investment bank about 10 years ago on the Isle of Man. Funnily enough the project was called Paranoid. The systems were sophisticated then so god only knows how good the detection patterns have gotten by now. All these systems do is mine database transactions, look for trends, associations and behaviour patterns. The 1 I developed all that time ago executed a single detection pattern each day. There was 31 patterns in total ( for max of 31 days in the month ).

But back to the question. You really shouldn't have an issue doing a bank transfer to a Middle East country. There will be some exceptions but in the main I'd imagine there is a decent banking infrastructure.

I'd be asking your bank about an IBAN or SWIFT transfer. I'd much rather be dealing with a bank any day over Western Union.