The killing of Iran's top commander Qassim Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad this January has heightened tensions between the two countries and throughout the region. It follows President Donald Trump's provocative decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, which has served to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. This raising of the stakes is not new: western and especially US media have demonised Iran for decades. The bitter shared history goes back to Washington's involvement in the murky coup that ousted Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. After the fall of the shah, the creation of the Islamic Republic, and then Iraq's invasion of Iran - triggering a war that lasted for most of the 1980s - Tehran gave the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) military legitimacy, alongside the regular army. The Guards' later interventions in war-torn Iraq and then Syria and Lebanon represented Iran's first military victory outside its own borders in its modern history. President Hassan Rohani declared the end of ISIS in November 2017 in what General Soleimani, commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, called a decisive victory. That success followed Iran's signature, two years earlier, of its nuclear deal with six major powers, intended to end its diplomatic and commercial isolation. President Trump has comprehensively rejected Iran's attempt to return to the international scene.