Why Snake People Should Care About the Iran Deal

Brace for a popular-unpopular opinion:  I don’t like to be reminded of the fact that I’m a “millennial.” 

For one thing, generational monikers are a weird rhetorical device in that they force a common identity across diverse demographic swathes. But the term ‘millennial’ in particular has a singular laziness, a dogwhistle that implies self-congratulatory savvy and tolerance when used by the young, and frivolousness, entitlement, and narcisissm when uttered (invariably in a chiding tone) by the old. To avoid the term, I’ve even downloaded a Chrome extension to automatically replace the word itself wherever I come across it in terrible thinkpieces (my coworker opted for one that uses “pesky whipper-snappers”; I prefer “snake people”).

As such, I’ve been very hesitant to undertake the task of putting pen to paper both ‘as a millennial’ and ‘to fellow millennials,’ especially given our collective apathy, frustration, and confusion about the political process. But I do feel compelled to write today as a member of my generation on what I see as a historic event: The recently announced diplomatic agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers.

At face value, the agreement is a big deal because it accomplishes a foreign policy problem that has vexed the United States and the world for decades—the prevention of an Iranian nuclear weapon. By trading gradual sanctions relief for meaningful and verifiable concessions in the Iranian civil nuclear program, our diplomats in the State Department have brought home a big win for America and made the emergence of a new nuclear power in our lifetime less likely. And most impressively, they did it all without firing a single shot. You don’t get that kind of success in the Middle East very often these days.

But for a generation coming into our own on the world stage, the agreement with Iran is bigger than the security question—it also opens a window into what could be. All our lives, we’ve been told by a relatively small technocracy of old, white men who and what we need to be afraid of. This narrative of fear began with September 11^th, 2001 for many of us, evolving into an Axis of Evil abroad and a war on terrorism at home. The world is, we are constantly reminded by politicians and pundits alike, a scary and shrinking place wherein many people hate Americans and the values for which our country stands.

Nowhere is this demand that we be afraid more apparent than in the case of the Iranian regime. We are constantly told that the Iranian military is ‘on the march’ across the Middle East, though this often implies a gross overestimation of their capabilities. We are casually assured that military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program is a preferable and simple option, when it clearly is not. And perhaps most fundamentally, we are repeatedly bludgeoned with the idea that the Iranian regime is simply ‘too evil’ to be trusted, much less negotiated with—despite the fact that a nation of over 77 million people, many of whom are young, educated, and eager to engage with the world, almost assuredly don’t all share the attitudes of a handful of hardliner clerics.

Our grandparents’ and parents’ views of Iran were shaped by the 1953 coup and 1979 hostage crisis, both of which fostered a deep sense of resentment between our two countries. Old Iranians see their counterparts in the United States as arrogant, imperialist aggressors; old Americans in turn suspect all Iranians are radical, hostile theocrats. But we didn’t grow up with these shared caustic experiences, so why cling to the negative emotions they engendered? We are a generation that is seeing the world, and it is time that we start making our own calls about who we’re willing to extend a hand to and open a dialogue with.

The youth of Iran seem less interested in clinging to grudges from days past. People under 30 make up around 60% of their country’s population, and they are—in a way that only standoffish, post-colonialist reporting can convey—purportedly curious about and indulging in ‘Western’ culture. By some accounts, they are even wearing jeans and listening to music. For what it’s worth, none of this is meant to imply that young Iranians are ‘just like us,’ yearning for M1 Abrams tanks full of American Democracy™ to come rolling into Tehran. Instead, I’m merely suggesting that there is a generational opening with much more common ground than our respective hardliner old dudes would otherwise have us believe.

This is the part where someone from that aforementioned old guard tells me that I’m naïve. To be sure, every American—young and old—has reason to be concerned about the behavior of the Iranian regime; it perpetrates terrorism and commits human rights abuses. But again, the evidence is mounting that our demographic counterparts in Iran are growing weary of, or at least disenchanted with, the regime’s pariah-state behavior. What better way is there for us to forge a way forward than by supporting this new effort at diplomacy and leveraging any chance we get to build a new relationship between not just our countries, but our peoples?

So the ask here, to my fellow snake people, is twofold. On the one hand, embrace this shot at diplomacy with Iran—call your Representatives and Senators, and urge them (or their staffers, who are closer to your age) to give the deal a fair shake as they prepare to review it in Congress. But more broadly, start thinking about global affairs on a level that transcends keeping up with friends across the pond on Instagram or penning squishy pieces for your travel blog. It’s time for us to start taking the reins of American leadership in the world; let’s get to work at translating our experiences, our friendships, and our connectivity into a version of that leadership that makes sense to us.