Simple? Perhaps. For the moment have a gander at Maximal match in a recursive regex which is the bare minimum required if your going to merely capture maximum. My first thought is to follow the $re check with a code block that can check the just-captured result for the contents of your search.

for ( A .. E ) {
    print "$_: ";
    print '((A, B), C, (D, E))' =~ match( $_ ); # Returns '(D, E)'
    print "\n";
}

sub match {
    my $search = shift;
    my $re;
    eval qq[
        \$re = qr/
            \\( # Opening parenthese
            ((?: # Capture the contents
                [^()]+ # Body of a link
                |
                (??{\$re}) # Or recurse
            )+) # and allow repeats internally
            \\) # Closing parenthese
            # Test that the just-closed capture block contains $search
+.
            (?(?{ -1 != index \$^N, \$search })(?=)|(?!))
            /x;
    ] or die $@;

    return $re;
}
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