Today we are enemies. It was different when the Shah was in power. I’m not talking about History. I’m talking about now.
Iran threatens your 'allies' in a minimal way as they have basically no real military. Iran supports material support to some organizations that the US but mostly its allies don't like. The US supports about 100x more people Iran doesn't like and are just as hostile to Iran as Iranian allies are to the US.
And this is outside of arguments if the US should even be such strong allies with Saudi and co (including Israel).
And to simply say 'we are enemies therefore we can no change policy' is idiotic. The US and the Soviet Union were enemies, until in series of diplomatic talks many of the issues were resolved. The same goes for China.
The US has totally fucked up its relationship with Iran and its broader middle east politics in the last 50 years that is is hard to even comprehend the amount of utter and complete stupidity that went on.
Unfortunately HN post are not conductive to explaining all these issues. What I will point out is that we have lots of evidence from Political Science that sanctions are not effective to achieving political goals. We also have very good knowledge that the sanctions are not actually effective at what they are targeting.
Neither the missile sanctions nor the nuclear sanctions have actually achieved their goals. Democrats will of course argue that Obama nuclear sanctions were effective at 'forcing Iran to the table' but this is basically just putting on rose colored glasses if you actually understand the negotiations. Iran actually forced the US to give up on its some of its central demand, since despite sanctions the Iranian nuclear enrichment program (note, not weapons program) was not slowed down (in fact it went faster).
And what is even worse is that the US spent all this massive amount of effort on preventing Iran from doing and having all these things, while the US completely ignored things other nations did that are 100x worse violations. Israels nuclear nuclear weapons program, Pakistans nuclear weapons program, Saudi ICBMs are all far more dangerous then anything Iran had or was even aiming for and yet the US didn't lift a finger or in some cases closed it eyes to it.
All of UAE, Saudi, Qatar (and arguably Israel as well) support groups that are far worse and ideologically more opposed to what the US stands for compared to the groups Iran allies with. Yet, those are allies and not enemies.
Not trying to destroy the live of avg Iranians with sanctions and 'leaving them alone' is actually very reasonable and would help both the US, Iran and the middle east in general. That does not mean you can not still be opposed to each other on major issues.
That is not possible when Iran threatens our allies and provides material support to organizations with the stated goal of causing mayhem to Americans and their allies.
Let’s be realistic: Iran and America are enemies. Keep that in mind when offering solutions.