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To the extent I can give you a neat answer, I think it comes down to the principal-agent problem, a ruling class which legitimizes itself on the basis of a particular revolutionary ideology, and of course, blind luck and historical contingency.
As you indicate, prior to the Revolution, Iran was basically an Israeli ally. Then you have the revolution, in which counter-elites overthrew the Shah's regime in the name of an ideology which fused left-wing anti-colonialism with religion. As is usually the case, there was a range of opinion amongst the revolutionaries about what shape the post-revolutionary world would take, but the more hardline elements won out. The Iranian Hostage Crisis was a kind of bleeding ulcer that would have prevented normalization of relations between the US and Iran even if the US had been inclined to recognize the new regime - which we weren't. The Shah had been perceived as a key ally against Communism and the whole US security complex had been humiliated by their failure to anticipate or prevent the revolution, so negotiation was always gonna be a heavy lift.
Then comes the Iran-Iraq war, an absolutely brutal conflict in which all sorts of atrocities are committed and in which the US (who mostly still sees Iran as their main problem in the Middle East) backs Iraq. During the war, Iran doubles down on its revolutionary hard-line attitudes. Remember, a lot of the military was considered unreliable because they were associated with the Shah, so Iran lacks a corp of professional, capable officers. They compensate by invoking sheer fanaticism. When the war ends, you have a generation of leaders whose formative experiences have been fighting the US and it's proxies in the name of Revolutionary Shiism, burying their friends and family along the way. Additionally, various things happen which contribute to Iran being an international pariah and make normal relations difficult to impossible with the rest of the world.
Combine this history with geopolitical opportunism. There's lots of Shia throughout the middle-east, mostly in a politically subordinate position. As you pointed out, Iranians are not Arabs, and are the wrong kind of Muslim as far as most of the middle eastern regimes are concerned. So there's already a lot of tension there, not helped by the fact that Iranians aren't shy about considering themselves the successor of the Persian empire. Iran doesn't have the conventional military power to be a regional hegemon, but of course just as the revolution happens we're entering a golden age of unconventional warfare. So, lets assume you're at odds with all your neighbors, and you don't have the guns, tanks and airplanes to threaten them, but you do have a whole bunch of dedicated Shia operatives with paramilitary experience. And you have a bunch of not-particularly-happy Shia looking to put pressure on their own governments. What do you do?.
Thats more or less how we got to where we are. You have a generation of leaders invested in a particular view of the world, who have embedded themselves in the government and security apparatus of the state. You have a hostile but stable equilibrium in which Iran doesn't get along with the US or its Arab neighbors but nobody wants to risk a full-on military conflict (until recently). Personally, everything I took from own study of Iran in grad school was that I'm glad it wasn't my problem to deal with. Cuz it really is a thorny problem. If you're a based conservative, you can point out that Iran is constantly starting shit at every opportunity, and you're absolutely right. If you're a bleeding-heart liberal, you can point out that all the stick-shaking and sanctions and tough-talk haven't actually effected a change in regime attitudes, and you're also absolutely right. Personally, I'm not optimistic about the latest developments. Sure, we can smash their conventional forces, and their economy, and kill all their leaders. But in another twenty years there will be a fresh crop of military age males. And what will their formative experiences have been?
This is as good a take as I've seen, but it's a more detailed version of (slightly uncharitably) "the conspiracy theories of a revolutionary pack of morons in 1979 drove them to fight their only geopolitical friends in the region".
The answer to the questions in your final paragraph, as I see the current state of US policy is that Iran is going to be systematically excluded from middle-eastern affairs. This wouldn't have been my personal policy preference, but I see why they're doing what they're doing. The Sunni are the vast majority, they control most of the countries, they have most of the oil, etc. The combination of Israel, Egypt and Iran as balancing various parts of teh arab world is over for now.
I think what Trump is doing is trying to crush the "Shia Crescent", partly because the two ends of that crescent got themselves into fights they couldn't win. Whatever the outcome of the current air campaign/Hormuz crisis, I doubt Iran is going to be in any shape to be secretly funding and arming other people for a decade or so. In the meantime, what happens to their clients? If Hezbollah and Hamas can both be neutralized as military forces while their sponsor is down, the PA can be strengthened as the leadership of the Palestinians and some sort of deal becomes at least more possible than it currently is. Oct. 7th was Iran's last dice throw to stop this process, and it didn't work.
Meanwhile, various ethnic and religious minorities which have been broadly Shia-aligned/sympathetic (Yazidi, Kurds, Druze, etc.) have been systematically mass murdered, driven out or politically marginalized across the middle east. ISIS did a lot of this, AQ a fair bit etc. The result has been to drastically weaken the various groups that Iran could hypothetically use as agents against Sunni powers. The middle east is being arabized and sunnized.
In the current conflict the Sunni countries (excluding the UAE) pretty much just sat there and took it as Iran obliterated their air defenses, military bases and essential infrastructure with missiles and drones. Whether this is because they fear Iran itself or because they fear their own people rising up if they get too cozy with Israel, either way their oil output has cratered and Trump's blockade currently aims to drive Iran to the state that Iran has already driven every other Gulf nation to (except Oman).
If anything it looks like it's the US that's going to be systematically excluded from Middle Eastern affairs as Gulf countries discover that cutting a deal with Iran is the only way to get oil to market without getting struck by Shaheds. In the long run the Aya-toll-ah could generate more revenue for Iran than oil exports ever did.
None of those groups were "Shia-aligned"; those are American-aligned groups, and their slaughter is a demonstration of the impotence and short-sightedness of American imperial policy. Yet more proof of Kissinger's old adage that to be America's enemy is dangerous but to be America's friend is fatal.
If Iran were to make a comeback in Syria it would be through funding pissed off (mostly) Sunni Syrians in the territory that Israel occupied after the fall of Assad to create a kind of Hamas-Hezbollah hybrid. If anything, fighting the US directly creates more opportunities for this sort of cross sect collaboration; the Houthis started working with Al-Shabaab and AQAP after they achieved "street cred" fighting the US Navy during Prosperity Guardian and Rough Rider.
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