3 Holer - with all due respect, given the politics of many of those countries and airlines, it is absolutely not paranoia.
However the good news is, after discussion with a bunch of colleagues at (or once at) EK, they believe the airline is sufficiently global and enough managerial and admin posts filled by capable westerners that it would be pretty unlikely that too much covering-up occurs.
Certainly they don't assign such benevolence to two very proximate neighbouring carriers but they believe Emirates to be reputable and given the constitution of it's workforce, unlikely to go too astray in this case. Perhaps wishful thinking but hopefully it eventuates this way.