The complicated relationship between Iran and the media, along with tensions between generations is a recipe for disaster,  anthropologist, and filmmaker Narges Bajoghli told a small but engaged audience on Oct. 3 at the MIT Center for International Studies.

Bajoghli is the author of “Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic,” and an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

 Bajoghili described her research process and the topics she found among the way.

Host Mahsa Rouhi, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at MIT, described Bajoghili’s work in glowing terms.

“Her research makes the situation colorful; it shows people as who they are,”  Rouhi said.

The book makes the reading experience personal, taking the reader through Bajoghili’s research process. When  Bajoghili goes to a meeting, the reader feels like they are present in that meeting, Rouhi said. The reader follows Bajoghili’s journey from the 2009 Green Movement all the way to present Iranian politics.  The 2009 Green Movement, referred to as the Persian Awakening by the Western media, is a political movement that started after the 2009 Iranian presidential election. Its aim was to remove Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then Iran’s President, from office.

The way the media has portrayed Iran worsens the U.S.- Iran relationship, Bajoghili said. The negative relationships get intensified by news outlets. “Iranians are possessed by madness… blinded by religious fervor,” according to one news outlet Bajoghili cited, and “the Islamic Republic is an irrational force.”  The media’s negative portrayal of Iran intensifies tensions between both countries.

 “The media output [should] not be confined to religion or Islamic politics but rather tend to focus on class, generational differences, and social mobility,” Bajoghili said.

The heavy political air between Iran and the U.S. created obstacles for Bajoghili’s research. “The States see us as potential spies,” said Bajoghili, a native Iranian.  She had to constantly keep researching for two years in order to be trusted by the US government to prove that she was not a spy. U.S. Homeland Security put her through a lot of legal processes, and Hopkins university had to spend over $50,000 on legal fees for her to come into the U.S., she said. 

Inside Iran, Bajoghili said many of the tensions are driven by generational differences. It seems to be a constant ping pong game of guilt between the older and younger generations, where either of them refuses to understand the other or even make an attempt to learn from one another, she said. The older generation says the younger do not know what it’s like to marginalized, while the younger blames their marginalization on the older. 

The generational gap is demonstrated by an interview she conducted between a father and son in Iran. Bajoghili was surprised at how much the children are challenging their elders. The son blamed his father for the instability of Iran, while the father continued to emphasize that the younger generation did not understand how quickly the regimes come and go. Bajoghili said that in order to understand Iran’s two-dimensional issue, thereof the generation gap.

Iran needs to unify its people in order to have a strong government, she said. With the opposing political and generational views and values, it opposes destabilization. After the Green Movement, Iran has been a constant struggle on which is the right way to govern who’s views should it follow. Being a country whose religion plays a big role in politics, extreme environmental degradation, and a recently ended dictatorship, Iran is still in the works of a stable government. 

 Iran is stuck in a perpetual cycle of the younger versus the older, she said. Without reaching a common consensus, Iran will continue to struggle with its people, and unity is unlikely.