For decades, a single chant, “Death to America”, has echoed through Iran’s streets, schools, and airwaves.
Behind the slogan lies a deep story of fear, indoctrination, and now, rebellion.
“Marg bar Āmrikā! Marg bar Āmrikā!
It’s one of the most jarring things you can hear in modern politics.
“Marg bar Āmrikā! Marg bar Āmrikā!”
“Death to America.”
It’s not just a chant. For Iran’s regime, it’s a mission statement.
For the past 46 years, Islamic leaders here have treated this slogan like gospel—something shouted in schools, broadcast on state TV, and repeated at rallies. Day in, day out.
Each morning, young students line up in rows. Then instead of a pledge or song, they chant: “Death to America. Death to Israel.”
Lana Silk remembers those mornings all too well.
“As a schoolchild myself, I was made to line up in the school yard before the school day, every day, ” Lana Silk of Transform Iran told CBN News. “And we were watching…observed as we had to shout, ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel’ before the school day would begin. It was indoctrination.”
She grew up in Tehran. Even as a young student, Silk says it didn’t sit right.
“I understood it fully and it created such horrible tension in me. I remember, trying to position myself, you know, we were lined up like soldiers in an army. You could almost say. And I remember trying to position myself so that I could be hidden behind another girl so that they couldn’t see if my lips were moving,” Silk recalls. “Even then, as a five, six, seven-year-old girl, I knew it to be wrong, and it upset me.”
That chant was born during a revolution. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile and took power.
He didn’t want to just change Iran, he wanted to spark a global Islamic movement.
He once said: “We do not worship Iran. We worship Allah. Let this land burn, let it go up in smoke as long as Islam wins in the end.”
“That’s exactly right. That was his theology,” Cliff May, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CBN News. “That patriotism, love of country, is paganism. You’re supposed to love God, love Allah, not love your country. He saw that as (a) conflict. You couldn’t do both.”
Mays says this wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a strategy with “Death to America” at the center.
“What Khomeini wanted was to restore Islamic supremacy and power in the world,” May said. “And that could only be done if America was defeated or at least diminished. And that’s really the basis for ‘Death to America.'”
On February 1, 1979, while flying from Paris to Tehran, ABC’s Peter Jennings asked Khomeini how he felt about returning home after 14 years in exile.
“Hich. Hich,” responded Khomeini.
That word “Hich” means “nothing” in Persian.
“Yes, another famous quote and I think his whole persona was supposed to be this untouchable, unreachable, beyond you know, basic human emotion, religious purity,” said Silk. “And that was all part of the act, wasn’t it? That, yes, “I’m not, I don’t carry (or) get carried by waves of emotion. I have a bigger agenda here.'”
Fast forward 40-plus years and the chant still hasn’t gone away.
Just two years ago, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this:
“The situation between America and Iran is this: When you chant, “Death to America!” It is not just a slogan, it is policy,” Khamenei said.
Iran’s leaders still call the U.S. the “Great Satan,” and Israel, “Little Satan.”
But lately, on Iran’s street’s the people are chanting something very different.
“Death to the Dictator. Death to the Dictator.”
The 2022 protests after Mahsa Amini’s death, a 22-year-old arrested for not allegedly wearing her hijab properly, sparked something huge.
The chants weren’t against America. They were against Iran’s own leaders.
Iranian-born Mike Ansari is with Heart 4 Iran.
“The younger Iranians, especially those that are active in recent protests, the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ ones, the chants feel false,” said Ansari. “They’re replacing the slogan with ‘Death to the Dictator,’ or ‘Our Enemy is Right Here in Our Country.'”
After the latest strikes by Israel and the U.S., Silk says a lot of people inside Iran are quietly wondering could this be it? Could this finally lead to real change?
Many believe the regime is weaker now than it’s ever been in its 46-year rule–more isolated, more distrusted, and more out of step with its own people.
“What the people associate with these chants, and this kind of rule is suffering,” argued Silk. “And there’s no fooling them anymore. There was a time when they bought into it as a religious endeavor, a high standard. But the fruit of this has been so painful that they are against it now.”
