I believe this has been mentioned in passing in this thread but I'll repeat just in case: Unless you are working with xml or HTML in your org documents, and even then, having these two lines in your org configuration (e.g. org-mode-hook):
(modify-syntax-entry ?< ".") (modify-syntax-entry ?> ".") solves all the problems with languages that use these in an unbalanced manner (comparison, assignment). I've had this configuration for years now and it just works (for me). -- : Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50, Org release_9.4.6-628-g366444 : Latest paper written in org: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05096