Following the downing of the U.S. drone, Iranian Parliament Deputy Speaker Masoud Pezeshkian declared that his nation will never bow down to Washington’s demands. In statements from the podium, Pezeshkian added that the Islamic Republic will continue to advance its aspirations with “full force, and resist” anyone who stands in its way.
Iranian lawmakers in the plenum responded by repeatedly chanting “Death to America.” The chants, often repeated since the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the U.S.-backed Shah, came weeks after Trump claimed in a televised interview that the Iranians “have not screamed ‘death to America'” as of late. Since his remarks, Iranian state television has broadcast multiple occasions in which such chants occurred, including this past Friday as a major Tehran mosque, by the regime-appointed religious cleric who threatened to turn the Hormuz Strait into a “graveyard of trespassers.”
Imam Muhammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari also used his sermon to declare “we are the people of resistance and active deterrence. We do not start, but if you start be sure that you are not going to be the one that finishes, if you strike one you will be hit once – which you were – and maybe you will be hit three times, so be careful…. “Death to America! Death to America!”