Not a Trump fan, but I think it’s fair to say that Iran felt much less free to be jerks during 2017-2021 than recently.
Very early in 2017, Trump sent a bunch of missiles into Syria (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike) after they behaved badly. It seemed to have a chilling effect on the whole region for most of his presidency. Much less insanity happened for the following four years than normal.