IRANIAN-U.S. RELATIONS: THE LONG DOWNHILL SLIDE

I have written about the decline in Iranian-U.S. relations before in a piece called "Four Political Disasters" during my lifetime, of which overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran was the first.  The consequences of this are with us still.
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-four-political-disasters.html

To review:
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d'état (Persian: کودتا   ۸ مرداد ), was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953,[5] orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project[6] or "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot").[7][8][9][10] It was the first covert action of the United States to overthrow a foreign government during peacetime.[11]*

Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP) and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves.[12] Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.[13][14][15]

We can skip all the intermediate steps to disastrous relations down to today to the recent killing of  Gen. Qasem Soleimani aside from saying that a nuclear accord with Iran and many nations left things pretty calm in 2015.  We did this supposedly because of an imminent threat to American lives.  Unfortunately, our present government has no reputation for truth.  Our President said that the killing was defensive and meant to keep the peace.**  Even so, will killing Soleimani stop the threat?  Who knows, but the record is that this killing won't stop such attacks, indeed if they are planned, but will enhance them.  We keep doing these things expecting that they will change Iran's pattern of behavior, but they don't.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I guess our politicians just don't understand the Iranians, except that our current approach to Iran is similar to what we tried in Vietnam, and it didn't work there either.

In addition, there had been ongoing demonstrations by the people of Iran against their leadership and this killing has changed the demonstrations to anti-U.S. with trampling upon and burning of the U.S. flag. The effect in the short term is to unify Iranians against the U.S. ** Why shouldn't we have let the anti-government demonstrations continue?

A disturbing feature of all this is that President Trump claimed that President Obama planned to start a war with Iran in order to be re-elected president.***  So is President Trump's current plan to do just that?  If so, this killing is just the first of a series of events we will see of an increasing war with Iran.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
** https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/04/politics/trump-iran-soleimani-strike-concerns/index.html
*** https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/before-qasem-soleimani-killing-trump-warned-of-iran-war-by-obama.html