For much of Tuesday, it was unclear whether the United States would be launching a full-scale attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

But US President Donald Trump’s threat against Iran – that “a whole civilization will die tonight” – prompted condemnation from one of Generation Z’s most prominent activists.

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Swedish advocate Greta Thunberg expressed dismay at what she described as a muted public reaction to Trump’s threat.

Known for her activism on issues such as climate change and Gaza, Thunberg linked Trump’s comments to wider questions of passivity in the face of war crimes.

“The president of the United States just said that a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Thunberg said in an Instagram video on Tuesday, shortly before a ceasefire was announced.

“And no one is reacting. This speaks for itself. What the f*** is anyone even doing at this point?”

She called on her viewers to stop such rhetoric from becoming the status quo.

“We have normalised genocide, total annihilation of entire people, the systematic destruction of the biosphere which we are all depending on to survive, and that corrupt, racist war criminals can act with complete impunity,” she said.

“But even though we have allowed far too much so far, it is not too late to say stop.”

Experts have noted a generational divide among perspectives about the US and Israeli war against Iran.

In the US, polls have found that young people are more likely to express scepticism about the war, as well as support for Israel and US intervention more broadly.

Scepticism about intervention

Gen Z would not be the first generation to oppose a war that their elders had a greater tolerance for.

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Similar divides have been chronicled throughout US history, including during the Vietnam War in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

But recent polls have suggested pronounced opposition among young people to the current war against Iran.

A poll released on Tuesday from the Pew Research Center found that young people across the political spectrum were more sceptical about the war’s prospects for success.

That was even true among Trump’s right-wing base. While 67 percent of Republicans over the age of 65 believed that the war would make Iran less likely to develop a nuclear weapon, just 25 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said the same.

When asked about the effect the war might have on the Iranian people, just 7 percent of older Republican voters responded that they would be worse off. That percentage was dwarfed by the nearly 28 percent of younger voters who believed the same thing.

Democratic-leaning voters were not as widely divided by age, though younger voters did tend to be more pessimistic about the war, according to Pew.

Some 60 percent of young Democratic respondents aged 18 to 29 felt the war would leave Iranians worse off, compared with only 48 percent of Democrats over age 65.

Similar trends have been documented by other pollsters since the outbreak of the war on February 28.

On March 20, Emerson College also released a survey that found young people in the US tend to fear the outbreak of war more than older respondents. Nearly 75 percent of people under 50 thought a new world war was on the horizon in the next four years, but 54 percent of those over age 50 shared that belief.

The publication Politico, meanwhile, found disparities in its poll of men who identified as “MAGA Republicans”, part of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement.

Only 49 percent of the respondents in that category, under age 35, believed Trump had a plan for the war on Iran. That was a far smaller ratio than the 70 percent over 35 who felt the same way.

A continuing trend

The generational divide has been reflected in public opinion surveys about other recent conflicts as well.

Polls have found pronounced opposition among young people in the US to foreign intervention, a trend some critics have tied to the historical context of their upbringing.

Many in Gen Z grew up in the shadow of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of the broader “war on terror” launched after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

A separate Pew Research Center poll from December 2025 suggests an isolationist streak among young people.

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It found that only 39 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 believed it was important for the US to take an active role in world affairs, compared with 73 percent for those aged 65 and older.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has also prompted a Gen Z pushback, according to polling firms.

Since the war began in October 2023, human rights experts have documented multiple violations of international law and grave human rights abuses, including forced starvation, the mass killing of civilians and the withholding of humanitarian aid.

Tuesday’s poll suggested that 84 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 held an unfavourable view of Israel.

For those over the age of 50, the figure was significantly lower: 76 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Thunberg has been outspoken about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza as well.

Last year, she took part in a humanitarian aid flotilla that set out to deliver assistance to Gaza. That October, she was detained and deported by Israeli forces.