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This week, Iranian worshipers gathered for the first Friday prayers since the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For most of the mourners, Khamenei was the only ruler they had ever known. After 36 years as Iran’s supreme leader — plus eight as president — the octogenarian was one of the longest-serving heads of state in the world.

He was a little over 10 years old when Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized his country’s oil, angering England, which had controlled most of it for decades. He was a teenager when the Eisenhower administration and British intelligence worked together to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadegh. He was in leadership when the Reagan administration outwardly supported Iraq while secretly selling weapons to Iran during the Iraq-Iran War.

Khamenei’s worldview was shaped in part by witnessing the colonial history between his oil-rich nation and the West.

Iran’s regime change came at the onset of this war. However, as demonstrated by the mourners who marched the streets of Tehran carrying portraits of Khamenei — yelling anti-America chants along the way — a change in our relationship with the country is going to take significantly longer. Bombs can topple the present and reshape the future, but they can never change the past. And just as we in America have our dates of significance that we commemorate — D-Day, July 4, Sept. 11 — the day the United States and Israel killed Khamenei won’t be forgotten any more than the toppling of Mossadegh was.

The Trump administration’s handling of an oil-rich nation closer to home, Venezuela, seems likely to feed a similar animosity.

What drove a wedge between the British government and the Iranian people during Mossadegh’s era was money. England refused to do a 50-50 split sharing the profits from the oil it was extracting. Iran was not only getting less than 20% of the proceeds, but its people were also subject to poor conditions. In 1950, when Saudi Arabia negotiated a 50-50 split with American oil companies, Mossadegh sought the same for Iran. When England said no, Iran seized control of oil operations within its........

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