Death to America
anti-American political slogan
"Death to America" is a political slogan expressing anti-Americanism or antipathy toward the United States. It has been widely used in Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Pakistan. Ruhollah Khomeini, the first supreme leader of Iran, popularized the term. The literal meaning of the Persian phrase Marg bar Âmrikâ (مرگ بر آمریکا) is "Death to America", though the phrase is translated into English as the less crude "Down with America" in most official Iranian translations. The chant "Death to America" has come to be employed by various anti-American groups and protesters worldwide.
The slogan has historically been contextualized as a reaction to the U.S. government's policies towards Islamic countries and merely an expression of outrage at those policies, not a wish for literal death for American people themselves. Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei interpreted the slogan as "death to the U.S.'s policies, death to arrogance" and death to specific American politicians, including Donald Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo, clarifying that Iranian people do not oppose the American people.
History
Following the fall of the pro-American Pahlavi dynasty in early 1979, Iranian protesters regularly shouted "Death to America" and "Death to the Shah" outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran, including the day the embassy was seized on 4 November 1979, which commenced the Iran hostage crisis. Throughout the crisis, Iranians surrounding the embassy chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Carter". When Iran released the remaining 52 American hostages on 20 January 1981, they were led through a gauntlet of students forming parallel lines that shouted "Death to America" as they boarded the airplane that would fly them out of Tehran.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Death to America” is anti-American political slogan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Death, America and anti-American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “anti-American political slogan” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15095592. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 1981.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Death to America” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.