The plot that caused him to adopt the "Iron Man" persona involved him heading to Afghanistan to demonstrate a new weapons system Stark Industries developed to the US troops stationed there, before his convoy is ambushed by local insurrectionists, the Ten Rings, and he is taken hostage by them to build them a copy, causing him to implant a Palladium Reactor into his chest due to shrapnel, and to build the Mark I suit to bust out of captivity.
You could substitute the "Afghanistan" part for any other region, while keeping the plot more or less the same, since the original Iron Man plot was, iirc, the same just with Vietnam instead, provided the US has troops somewhere there. The Ten Rings, for instance, referred originally to the Ten Rings of the Mandarin, one of Iron Man's villains in the comics and at least one cartoon, and while they were turned into a Taliban-analogue in the movie (however, they were also multinational, due to input from the actor that played their leader), they could easily be switched out for any other paramilitary terrorist force and you wouldn't lose alot.
Like, if Russia remains the go-to villain for pop culture, I could easily see the Ten Rings resemble the Wagner Group or Raman Kadyrov's Chechen Militia/Kadyrovites ITTL. Or, if China is the boogeyman, then they remain closer to their original iteration as some terrorist organization with roots in Chinese culture. Hell, it could even be Central or South American Drug Cartels. It all depends on which region has notable US military involvement, or had one in recent memory when the movie is being written.