Faith or Ideology? Religiosity, Political Islam, and Anti-Americanism in Iran

The Middle East, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran, has a reputation for harboring very strong forms of anti-Americanism. Why are some individuals more hostile to the United States than others? What factors are associated with anti-American sentiments? This article offers the first systematic study of anti-Americanism in Iran, a country in which anti-Americanism has been a guiding policy of the government since the 1979 revolution. Based on original survey data from 2016, I seek to explain how religiosity and political Islam influence public attitudes toward the United States. Distinguishing between political and cultural anti-Americanism, I find that, while support for political Islam is significantly associated with both types of anti-Americanism, religiosity predicts only cultural anti-Americanism. The findings challenge the literature that associates anti-American sentiments with religiosity in the Islamic world.