‘Death To America’: Iran’s Theocracy Escalates Rhetoric As Protests Grow
(ANALYSIS) The warning issued by Iran that U.S. and Israeli forces would become “legitimate targets” if the Trump administration strikes the Islamic Republic of Iran is less a statement of military doctrine than a window into how the country’s theocratic system responds when its authority is challenged from within.
As nationwide protests, which started on Dec., 28, stretched into a third week and the death tolls climbed on Sunday, the Iranian regime’s instinctive pivot toward external confrontation reveals both its ideological foundations and its growing insecurity.
At its core, Iran is not governed like a nation-state, but as a clerical polity in which sovereignty is vested in the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, all institutions — presidency, parliament, justice system and security forces — exist to preserve a system known as velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist).
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This Shia Islamic political theory asserts that a faqih — or Islamic jurist — should have ultimate authority over society. That means when unrest threatens that structure, the regime has historically relied on two intertwined strategies: Repression at home and defiance abroad.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who serves as Iran’s parliament speaker, threatened the U.S. and Israel — but also praised the country’s Revolutionary Guard and its Basij militia for “standing firm” against protesters.
“In the event of an attack on Iran, both the occupied territory and all American military centers, bases and ships in the region will be our legitimate targets,” he said. “We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat.”
Such rhetoric serves several functions within Iran’s theocratic framework. First, it reframes domestic unrest as a foreign conspiracy, allowing clerical elites to delegitimize protesters as working with the West. Second, it rallies hard-line constituencies by invoking the regime’s founding narrative of resistance against global forces. Third, it raises the cost of international pressure by signaling that any external intervention could escalate into wider Middle Eastern conflict.
“Death to America” has been a decades-long slogan for Iranian hard-liners. At the same time, Iranian state media’s portrayal of calm streets, funerals for security forces and accusations that protesters resemble ISIS fits squarely within this worldview. Violence by the state is sanctified as defense of Islam.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported the new death toll of 203 on Sunday. Of those killed, 162 are protesters and 41 are members of the security forces, the group said.
Staff at three Iranian hospitals told BBC News that their facilities were overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured patients. The agency added that they are receiving claims of far more deaths and that it was still assessing that over 3,280 others had been arrested.
Protests grow inside Iran
Online videos — spread through the use of Starlink satellite transmitters after Iran's autocratic rulers shut down the internet — showed demonstrators gathering in northern Tehran’s Punak neighborhood. There, it appeared authorities had closed off streets, with protesters waving their mobile phones.
In recent days, videos showed women sparking a new trend by lighting cigarettes, using them to burn photographs of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — an act of direct defiance to the country's religious authority.
“The pattern of protests in the capital [Tehran] has largely taken the form of scattered, short-lived, and fluid gatherings, an approach shaped in response to the heavy presence of security forces and increased field pressure,” the Human Rights Activists News Agency said. “Reports were received of surveillance drones flying overhead and movements by security forces around protest locations, indicating ongoing monitoring and security control.”
Maziar Bahari, editor of IranWire news, said President Donald Trump’s recent threats against Tehran had "really scared many Iranian officials, and may have affected their actions in terms of how to confront the protestors."
"But at the same time ... it has inspired many protesters to come out, because they know that the leader of the world's main superpower is supporting their cause,” he told CBS News. “Many people have called what is happening in Iran right now a revolution.”
Clemente Lisi serves as executive editor at Religion Unplugged.