Several months ago, Pouneh, a 24-year-old Iranian American college student, announced to her father that she would be voting for opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the Iranian presidential election. After Mousavi lost, she joined thousands of demonstrators in Westwood calling the results a fraud.
Avesta, her 70-year-old father, shakes his head over what he sees as his daughter's youthful naivete. The retired medical researcher, who left Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, felt that voting would be an act of futility and a show of support for the current government, which neither he nor his daughter support.
"It's a general thing for people my age, that they did not and they do not accept the regime of the mullahs," he said. "She thought that there's no alternative at the moment, and that's not something that I think is a good judgment."
Pouneh said her vote made a statement that Mousavi was at least somewhat better than the hard-line incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Their political debates are typical of a generational divide among many Iranian American families. The 20-somethings are hopeful that change in Iran is possible through the ballot box. Their parents, on the other hand, say previous elections left them cynical about the voting process. And they know all too well how the political optimism of their youth has soured over time.
Avesta mumbled a few words in Persian when the face of an Iranian cleric flashed on CNN. "He's just cussing at the TV," Pouneh said.
Later, when an image of clerics sitting around a room appeared, Avesta expressed his displeasure in English: "Look at these fossils."
Pouneh rolled her eyes toward her father.
"See, I can sit here and not say anything," she said, "but other people can't."
Pouneh and her father asked that their last name not be published because they have relatives in Iran and Pouneh plans to visit there.
Pouneh has helped organize a series of demonstrations in Los Angeles over the last three weeks, donning a black face mask to protect her identity in the wake of government crackdowns in Iran.
Her mother worries about her safety. Her father doesn't mind the concept of protesting against Iran's government, a system in which clerics, not elected officials, have final authority. But he believes the recent demonstrations are too pro-Mousavi and not sufficiently anti-regime.
