The drive from Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport to the city centre is about 55 minutes.
The traffic can be described as a living, breathing force that moves as one through the capital of Iran, home to 10 million people, where amid the apparent chaos, there is an unspoken choreography.
Few collisions. Countless near-misses. An entire metropolis moving — somehow — through friction and noise at the feet of the towering Alborz mountains.
Walking in Tehran, as a tourist, is a confronting experience. You quickly adjust to the long, unapologetic stares to take in the layered story of the city written in stone, steel, and marble.
One thing is hard to miss. The hatred of America.
Plastered on the side of a 10-storey building in the city centre is a decades-old painting standing 100-feet tall known as the Death to America mural.
On it, the stripes of the US flag transform into bombs and the stars are replaced with skulls.
The words “Down With The U.S.A” are painted diagonally across what is the largest piece of propaganda in Tehran.
On the walls of the former US embassy in Tehran — renamed the “Den of Espionage” after the 1979 Iran hostage crisis — are dozens of anti-American, state-sponsored artworks.
They include a melting Statue of Liberty, a falling drone, broken chains and a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers.
Others have joined in around the city, spraypainting “Death to the USA” on various buildings and walls.
The outward aggression towards US imperialism on the streets of Tehran can be jarring.
Such is the ongoing hatred — at least from the fallen Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei and his followers — that the giant mural was repainted last year and a new, pointed image was erected in a separate location a month ago.
On a giant billboard in central Tehran is what can only be viewed as a direct warning to the United States.
It shows a bird’s-eye view of an aircraft carrier and its fighter jets being bombed. The deck of the carrier is littered with bodies, and in the water at the back of the ship are thick trails of blood representing the stripes on the US flag — a recurring theme in Tehran.
A slogan emblazoned across the artwork reads: “If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.”
The unveiling of the mural in Enghelab Square coincided with the arrival of several US warships in the region last month, including the USS Abraham Lincoln.
US President Donald Trump said the ships were there “just in case”.
“We have a massive fleet heading in that direction and maybe we won’t have to use it,” he told reporters in February.
A month later, the Supreme Leader is dead and war between Iran and the US — with the backing of another Iranian enemy, Israel — has seen bombs dropped throughout Tehran.
In retaliation, Iran launched a wave of strikes against Gulf states hosting US troops.
Israel says it has launched “large-scale strikes” on Tehran two days after the start of the campaign.
Three US servicemen were killed and Mr Trump has vowed to avenge their deaths while also warning that more US casualties are likely.
The US president wants Iranians to rise up and take back their country after the death of the Supreme Leader. He says the war could last “four weeks”.
“As strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks — or less,” he said.
Justifying the slogan ‘Death to America’
The slogan might seem simple, plastered across buildings in Tehran.
But it is not literal, according to the Ayatollah, who was killed in a bombing raid over the weekend.
Speaking on the slogan 10 years ago, he said it was “backed by reason and wisdom” but “it goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; it means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance”.
“This slogan means death to the policies of the US and arrogant powers,” he said.
“This logic is accepted by every nation when explained in clear terms.”
Mr Trump, speaking over the weekend after the US and Israel attacked Iran, revisited those words himself — he used them as a justification for war.
“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted Death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries,” he said.
Writing for CNN in 2015, reporter Nazila Fathi wrote that she was made to chant “Death to America” as an 11-year-old girl at school while she would “wave my fist in the air along with the other girls”.
But “those words meant nothing to me, especially because my family resented everything that the Islamic regime, which had come to power two years earlier, stood for.”
“People get tired of living with bigotry, especially if it is used as a weapon of repression at home.
“The Islamic regime used hostility toward the United States and Israel to promote a revolutionary fervour — a xenophobic narrative — for over 36 years,” she wrote.
“They used it as a moral justification for repression, for going after dissidents, accusing them of vague charges, and jailing them.”
When I visited Iran, I saw first-hand the impact of the 1979 revolution and how it had stifled expression, dispersed the country’s wealth among its ruling elite and cracked down hard on dissenters. How the strict observance of the Islamic code had taken its toll on once-vibrant people.
Invited inside a home in the city of Isfahan, 440km south of Tehran, I spoke with a young man who told me that in secret, he was a supporter of Donald Trump — something he could never say in public.
His father played records of Frank Sinatra for my wife and me — an American icon blaring inside the walls of the home in a country where music is heavily censored by the state.
What happens next in Iran is a fascinating exercise in self-determination. While many have taken to the streets of cities, including Tehran, to mourn the death of Ali Khamenei, many more are celebrating.
“When we are finished, take over your government,” Mr Trump urged the Iranian people. “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny.”
In the weeks and months to come, a different Iran will emerge. Whether its people still chant “Death to America” — and whether billboards and murals are painted over — will be quite telling.
