Gen Z doesn't have the same hang-ups about Iran as older Americans

As tensions build in the Middle East and the U.S. and Iran continue nuclear talks, a new poll published Thursday revealed that younger Americans are less worried about Iran than their elders by a significant margin.

According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs survey, “about half of U.S. adults are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned that Iran’s nuclear program poses a direct threat to the United States… About 3 in 10 are ‘moderately’ concerned and only about 2 in 10 are ‘not very’ concerned or ‘not concerned at all.”

But there is an age gap. “Americans generally hold a negative view of Iran, but the view is sharper among older Americans,” AP observes.

While “(a)bout 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Iran is an ‘enemy’ of the United States,” the poll showed that “only about half of U.S. adults under 45 say Iran is an enemy, compared with about 7 in 10 Americans ages 45 and older,” according to AP.

“There is also a wide generational divide in concern about Iran’s nuclear program, with only about one-third of Americans under 45 saying they are highly concerned, compared with about 6 in 10 older Americans.”

Why is there such a chasm between older and young Americans on this issue?

Responsible Statecraft reached out to a handful of experts for insights.

“For Americans who came of age before the Iranian revolution, the defining event regarding Iran was the hostage crisis of 1979-1981, in which 52 of their countrymen were held prisoner for over a year at the captured U.S. Embassy in Tehran,” said Paul Pillar, who served decades in the intelligence community, in the CIA and as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“That crisis dominated news in the United States for an extended period. It even spawned a nightly television program (which became ABC Nightline),” Pillar told Responsible Statecraft. “It seared into Americans' consciousness a perception of the Islamic Republic of Iran as being irrevocably hostile to the United States, with nothing that has happened since in U.S.-Iranian relations having anything close to the salience of the hostage crisis.”

American children who came of age in as late as the 1970s and early 80s will likely recall the Iran of their childhood as an infamous adversary, much in the same vein as the Soviet Union, so much so that the World Wrestling Federation’s top villain for a time was the Iranian-American “Iron Sheik” (who often tag-teamed with the Soviet-styled Nikolai Volkoff).

But for many born in later decades, Pillar observed, “(they) are too young to have lived through news of that crisis and have not had the same perception-forming experience.”

As a child of that era, the Stimson Center’s Christopher Preble had similar thoughts. “I will say that if someone was sentient (which is to say 10 years of age or older, in 1980) and therefore was exposed to days and then months on end of the Iranian hostage crisis, and death to America, on the nightly news (programs) etc., (there were just three or four of those back then), that memory casts a long shadow.”

“However, as it happens, I was 13 in 1980, and I don’t support bombing Iran — so I guess I really don’t speak for my generation, or anyone older than me?” Preble mused.

But not all is cut and dried. While Gen Z may not have the hang-ups of Gen X and Boomers, many older Millennials may have their own reasons for skepticism when it comes to Iran, said Preble.

“There is an additional wrinkle to consider: those serving in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 or 2014 (which is mostly people younger than me), certainly know colleagues killed or injured by Iraqi militias supported by Iran,” Preble pointed out. “Maybe they suffered injuries themselves from Iranian-made IEDs. They also have reason not to like the Iranians.”

He continued, “though to them I would say that they also should question (and many do) those Americans who sent them to fight in Iraq in the first place, on phony claims of Iraqi nuclear weapons (e.g. mushroom cloud), links to al Qaeda (i.e. the infamous Prague meeting that never happened), and the promise of a cakewalk once they arrived (i.e. the Iraqi National Congress was actually none of those things).”

Jim Antle, editor of the Washington Examiner Magazine, offered a note about why Gen Z’s views are so different. Beyond growing up in the shadow of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, they are now in their 20’s and see how war could affect them personally. “Younger respondents are also more likely to be of fighting age, which could color their views of war,” he observed.

The Cato Institute’s Jon Hoffman looked at the divide through a social lens.

“Older generations also tend to express greater fears toward the Middle East, Arabs, and Muslims than younger generations,” he shared. “After decades of propaganda, younger generations are challenging the stereotypes and flawed frameworks of previous generations.”

“They are concerned about real issues facing the American people, not lofty ambitions of global U.S. primacy,” Hoffman said.

Beyond the formative experiences, how the different generations consume media matters too.

Former top Fox News personality Tucker Carlson called out his old television employer in a video on Thursday, blaming it for uniformly pushing a pro-war narrative on Iran. “If (war) occurs, you can thank Fox more than any other media organization, more than any other lobbyist, more honestly than any government, more than the government of Israel. Fox News has pushed for this war.”

So what age group consumes Fox News the most?

“Older Americans are more likely than younger adults to say they both use and trust Fox News,” according to a Pew Research Center poll released in July 2025.

“While 47% of Americans ages 65 and older and 45% of those ages 50 to 64 say they regularly get news from Fox News, (only) 32% of those ages 30 to 49 and 28% of adults under 30 do the same.”

That’s a significant gap. Pew also noted that older Americans are also more likely to get their news from television in general. Meanwhile, Gen Z and Millennials are getting their news from social media (86% and 84% respectively) with top sources being YouTube, Instagram, podcasts, TiK Tok, and X. Meanwhile, their consumption of television and print news on a daily basis, especially for Gen Z, is in the single digit percentages.

Whether the U.S. goes to war with Iran or not remains uncertain. According to the AP-NORC survey above, nearly half of Americans have concerns about the Iranian government and its nuclear programs. However, that poll also revealed that more than 56% of Americans have low trust in Trump’s decisions about military force abroad. This dovetails with recent polls that show that Americans do not want to go to war with Iran, no matter how they feel about the regime.

President Donald Trump is 79 years old. Vice President JD Vance is 41. Both men have been known to have different and even seemingly contradictory views on occasion regarding Iran, at least in the past.

They’re not alone.