Saying "death to" in Farsi is like when we say "fuck" or "damn" or "to Hell with" some country or group. So when they say "Death to America," what they're saying is "Fuck the United States." But it figures that the superficial and simple-minded easily confuse political rhetoric by a populace with operative policy by the government. For Americans to believe that is akin to Iranians believing that because Trump supporters chanted "lock her up" at his rallies, Hillary Clinton gets knocks on her door daily by law enforcement officials.
Semantics aside, given our history of meddling with that country, is anyone really surprised? And again, those are chants by the population, not government policy. It's beyond confusion to conflate those two. It's kinda like when our resident morons kept bitching about Ahmadinejad launching nuclear missiles at Israel when he had neither the power nor the access to do so even if Iran possessed such weaponry (which they clearly didn't and still may not even at this moment).
In 1951, for the first time, they legitimately, democratically elected a prime minister who ran on a campaign of nationalization, namely of its oil industry. He was basically the Persian version of Nasser in Egypt or Ataturk in Turkey.
The CIA and MI6 tried to connect their leader, Mosaddegh, to the Soviet Union via what they called "black documents" or "black propaganda," meaning they just flat out made shit up and tried to pass it off as legit via phony pamphlets, books, newspaper articles in the foreign press, etc in order to whip up Western hysteria against him. In that infamous coup, they successfully overthrew Mosaddegh, then installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who immediately moved to construct a KGB-like secret police force known as the SAVAK, who specialized in Nazi-style torture techniques against political dissidents. Pahlavi was a lot like Stalin in that it seemed that his "enemies list" just seemed to grow and grow. He basically believed that the KGB was omniscient. Regardless, the propaganda still worked for decades and everyone was bemoaning how "that poor man" had to come to the US to receive cancer treatment near the end of his useless life and they were also bemoaning how Iranians "chose that time" to revolt.
So Iranians had to endure that cocksucker for 26 years, they didn't have another Mossadegh to look up/forward to because the independent nationalist movement in the Middle East was basically destroyed a year before during the Camp David Agreements, so they turned to the clerics, who were the only entity that had the capability to spearhead a revolution to take down the Shah. I'm sure a lot of Iranians who were alive at the time regret supporting them beyond that overthrow, I'm sure the younger ones absolutely detest them, but the people of Iran needed them at the time because however bad they have it now, 1953-1979 was an abject nightmare to which they never want to return, which is why they don't show near the contempt for their government the way they did for the Shah's.
They've had to endure one or another version of a living hell beginning August 15th 1953, and dickheads like Sack and Cyclone apparently think it inappropriate that they show animosity to one of the antagonists of that fateful day? Holy shit, talk about fucking snowflakes.
As to this spurious notion of their leadership being "suicidal," there's absolutely no reason to believe that. In fact, the US government was so confident in that assertion that it asserted the exact opposite. They've been saying things like "Since the revolution, Iran's first priority has consistently remained the survival of the regime" for years. Survival is the opposite of suicide. I shouldn't have to explain that to presumably intelligent people.
The Pentagon has also noted that to "ensure regime survival, Iran's security strategy is based first on deterring an attack. For years it has publicly discussed its "20-Million Man Army" and its asymmetric warfare doctrine as deterrents to any would-be invader."
And of course regarding nukes, the DoD noted "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy."
So Fox and Friends likes to tell people that the Iranian government is rabidly pursuing nuclear weapons in order to "wipe Israel off the map," as the ridiculous myth read at that time, and will soon threaten the United States with same as well.
Meanwhile the Department of Defense says that the Iranian regime is intent on survival and utilizes a defensive military posture that relies on deterrence, and that any hypothetical pursuits to nuclear weapons is but a means to achieve that exact end. They also claim, tacitly, that Iran knows full well that if they even armed a nuclear-tipped missile with the intent to deliver it in Israel or the US, they'd be wiped out in 30 seconds.
So you can believe one of two things: you can believe the very detailed studies done by people whose job it is to surveil Iran (Iran is under more surveillance than any country in the world), or you can believe American infotainment networks and bloggers whose jobs are to attract viewers by any means necessary.