TEHRAN: Marking the 40th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed on Friday that the people won’t stop chanting the anti-American slogan ‘Death to America’ as long as the US remains “evil and wicked.”
Speaking to a gathering of Iranian Air Force officers Khamenei said, “As long as America continues its wickedness, the Iranian nation will not abandon ‘Death to America’,” according to Reuters.
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He then explained that those slogan specifically directed at President Donald Trump and his associates, not “the American nation.” “Death to America’ means death to Trump, [National Security Adviser] John Bolton, and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo. It means death to American rulers,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to his official website.
The anti-American political slogan “Death to America” was first used in Iran since the inception of the Islamic Revolution in 1978 by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, who popularized the term.
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Trump withdrawn the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year and re-imposed sanctions that hurt the country’s struggling economy.