No one denies Soleimani was a bad guy. That is not in dispute. However, yesterdays terrorist is tomorrows prime minister and that changes things quite a bit. Remember Menachem Begin? He spilt a Nobel Prize with Sadat in the Camp David accords. When Israel was still Palestine he was heavily involved in blowing up a school that killed 49 British children as part of his terror tactics to force the British out. Should Carter have just shot him on the hills of Camp David? The issue here is becoming more clear - Trump lied about why he killed Soleimani and tried to kill a second person on the same day. He keeps changing the story about the intelligence - which until that day, he always claimed was phony. Trump is very much the problem. While Iran is hardly a picture of benign integrity, they were, according to our inspectors in compliance with the Nuclear deal that Obama negotiated with the EU - which is why the U.S. returned THEIR money to them. Remember we had been holding it since 1975. What they did with it I cannot say, and surprise! neither can you.
Trump comes in and voids the agreement, tries to provoke a war to have something to blame Obama for and for a long time Iran resisted. And here we are - waiting for the other show to drop - which it will, sooner or later. Had Trump kept the agreement, he would have had leverage with Iran economically. They were more anxious than ever to engage the West to improve the lives of their people and their economy.
You get your self all twisted about Iran's human rights record. That's true enough but the issue is, are we prepared to go in an nation build like we have failed so miserably at since the Vietnam war? Afghanistan has been well documented recently in reports from The Washington Post as an on going failure from day one - in 2001 - until this moment. Trillions of dollars, thousands of lives all for nothing and the outcome was known in 2003. Yet again, here we are, The nation building is over. WE can't do it, so, yes, bad things are going to happen in places like this. Of course, we seem to not care when Saudi Arabia does the same stuff. I wonder why?
This is a big problem, but Trump is a big part of it, and he has made it worse over the long haul, not in any way better. As to the legitimacy of the government in Iran - as far as I can see it is more legit than Trump being elected president. He needed the Russians to win here, the government in Iran did it on their own.