In an explanation unlikely to assuage the concerns of many Americans, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei clarified the meaning of the popular slogan “death to America” on Tuesday. “The aim of the slogan means death to U.S. policies and arrogance,” the supreme leader told a group of students of the phrase, widely chanted at rallies and at mosques after Friday prayers.
Some Iranian moderates have argued in the past that the slogan, which dates back to the revolution of 1979, is no longer useful, and most official documents translate the phrase, mar bar Amrika, as the somewhat more polite “down with America.”
