Even before a US drone strike took out Qassem Soleimani, Obama administration alums and their fans were slamming President Trump for daring to stand up to Iran.

The mobbing of the US Embassy in Baghdad, they said, was proof he’s “miscalculating.” In USA Today, Iran-nuke-deal negotiator Wendy Sherman insisted “Trump walked into Iran’s trap” by not ignoring the killing of one American and wounding of several US soldiers in a rocket attack on an Iraqi army by the Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah.

That’s right: Iran’s pawns had attacked an Iraqi base. Rest assured that most Iraqis aren’t in the least upset that the drone strike took out the head of Kataib Hezbollah, for all the noise about how Washington violated Iraq’s sovereignty by striking on its soil.

That also applies to Trump’s initial response to that first Kataib Hezbollah attack: more-conventional airstrikes on five of its bases in Iraq and Syria, which killed a couple dozen of its fighters.

When Iran’s militias responded by ordering members to attack the embassy, much of the US media blamed the victim. The New York Times described the paid “protesters” as “Iraqi mourners” and said Trump should “lessen tensions by opening some form of dialogue with Iran” and stop painting it “as the premier evildoer in the Middle East.”

Yet the Iranian regime is the premier evildoer in the Middle East, killing thousands of domestic protesters in the last two years while helping Bashar al-Assad kill Syrians, the Houthis kill Yemenis and Hezbollah kill innocents across the region.

When Iraqis began protesting Iranian domination of their nation late last year, Tehran sent in Soleimani to direct a brutal crackdown that left hundreds dead. The Washington Post editorial board actually blamed America for that, too: “Iran’s bloody repression of protests was an answer to the Trump administration.”

It all worked so much better under President Barack Obama, Sherman insisted: “Even as Washington was confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere, we maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq,” she claimed.

Some “coexistence”: By pulling out the last US forces from Iraq in 2011, when that country had finally achieved a measure of stability, Obama opened the door for Tehran to dominate Baghdad. And the nuke deal fed Iran $100 billion-plus — which Soleimani used to build up Tehran’s various “militia” pawns in Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Gaza, as well as Lebanon.

Obama’s policies earned such goodwill that Iran seized two US Navy boats in January 2016 and (among other humiliations) used the captive American sailors in propaganda videos — in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Another Obama national-security brainiac, Ben Rhodes, insists the nuclear deal “averted a war,” while Trump’s withdrawal from it “started this dangerous cycle of escalation that we are still on.”

Reality check: US sanctions had Iran’s economy in free-fall until Obama started relaxing them during the nuke negotiations. At best, the deal postponed Tehran’s march to the bomb by a few years — while legitimizing a nuke program after a decade and giving it a free hand (and free cash) to build its terror networks. It didn’t need to escalate when America was rushing to get out of its way.

Yes, Iran has been escalating for the past year in the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from the nuke deal and imposition of ever-tighter sanctions. But the president made it plain he didn’t want to escalate — even calling off airstrikes planned earlier this year after Iran shot down a US drone.

When he decided enough was enough, he was decisive — but measured. One American’s death brought the strikes on Kataib Hezbollah. The embassy assault was met by overwhelming defensive force from the Marines.

And when Soleimani flew into Baghdad to organize plans to kill more Americans, Trump ordered him taken out — finally refusing to hold off, as his predecessors had, from striking at this terrorist-in-chief simply because he’s a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

No immunity for terrorists, period. That’s a far better alternative to Obama-era appeasement.