Iranian President Donald Trump has challenged 50 years of Iranophobia, with the country's reputation as unpredictable, reckless, dangerous, and potentially nuclear. The mullahs, who took over from the Shah and replaced him with secular socialists, took over the most secular and modern of the Middle East Muslim nations, transforming them into a medieval state. They also murdered opponents and hung homosexuals, adulterers, and those who questioned their authority. The only link with Iran was its near limitless oil and natural gas reserves, sophisticated arms, and the Shah’s modernized cities. Despite this, they proved more corrupt (and more incompetent) than the Shah's entourage. They fought a destructive eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’�s overrated Iraqi dictatorship and were mostly militarily incompetent. They bombed US embassies, barracks and bases in the Middle Eastern without directly confronting the American military. They used lethal shaped-charge IEDs to kill thousands of Americans and their allies in Iraq, and also carried out a global network of death that terrified Western leaders and Arab neighbors. They believed their eventual destruction of Israel would regain their country's lost prestige and honor.