An aside: I was listening to a Rick Steves (American celebrity traveler) presentation on the radio the other day. He was getting too preachy and just as I was about to change the channel he recounted a story about a trip to Iran. They were stuck in traffic in sweltering heat and the driver says "death to traffic". This caught Rick off guard and he inquired further.
Long story short, "death to FOO" is apparently an idiomatic phrase in Iran, especially in a political context, going back to the early 20th century. From http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31116
The phrase became popular during the Persian Constitutional
Revolution (1905-1911), when political activists would chant
"zende ba ___" ("long live ___") in support of a policy or
leader, or "marg bar ___" in opposition. These two phrases
became entrenched within Iranian political discourse, and
during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, swarms of protestors
took to the streets chanting "marg bar Shah" to express
their dissatisfaction with Iran's monarchy. "Marg bar ___"
and "zende ba ___" have continued to live on as colloquial
phrases incorporated into political chants, and they have
been appropriated to express opposition to or support for
any number of subjects.
It's similar to how English speakers might say, "damn Iran". Such an utterance doesn't imply that one wishes all Iranians to burn in Hell for eternity.
I mention this because in American English "destroy" is a very strong literal term unless there's obvious sarcasm. Going back and parsing several infamous Iranian statements (official, or made by leaders)--"death to", "wiping Israel off the map", etc--I think it's fair to say that one could reasonably construe those statements as deliberately worded to refer to the Israeli political state. Of course, what Iran has said and what it has done (e.g. support terrorism) are quite different things. And destroying the political state vs the population is arguably a distinction without a difference as a practical matter. But in as much as Americans and Israelis believe that because of the seemingly common, blunt language that Iranians en mass wish to see the U.S. and even Israel literally destroyed, I think there's some unfair, possibly willful misinterpretation.
Long story short, "death to FOO" is apparently an idiomatic phrase in Iran, especially in a political context, going back to the early 20th century. From http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31116
It's similar to how English speakers might say, "damn Iran". Such an utterance doesn't imply that one wishes all Iranians to burn in Hell for eternity.I mention this because in American English "destroy" is a very strong literal term unless there's obvious sarcasm. Going back and parsing several infamous Iranian statements (official, or made by leaders)--"death to", "wiping Israel off the map", etc--I think it's fair to say that one could reasonably construe those statements as deliberately worded to refer to the Israeli political state. Of course, what Iran has said and what it has done (e.g. support terrorism) are quite different things. And destroying the political state vs the population is arguably a distinction without a difference as a practical matter. But in as much as Americans and Israelis believe that because of the seemingly common, blunt language that Iranians en mass wish to see the U.S. and even Israel literally destroyed, I think there's some unfair, possibly willful misinterpretation.