Iran’s youth bulge was considered a threat for the Iranian government and an opportunity for the west. Iranian educated youth in the scholarship on Iran was portrayed as a force of modernity that would end the problematic behavior of the Iranian revolutionary government (Basmenji, 2005; Varzi, 2006; Khosravi, 2008; Mahdavi, 2009). However, the recent literature has focused on the survival strategies of the regime and especially the regeneration of political elites by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Imam Sadiq University, envisioning a more hardline view in the new generation (Bajoghli, 2019; Golkar, 2015). This paper tries to explain this change in the literature by focusing on the political socialization of Iranian youth activists and argues that the last two decades’ developments, especially the crisis resulting from the securitization of Iran-US relations and the current public health, have undermined the pro-democracy youth activists. The first part will focus on President Trump’s campaign of maximum pressure, which resulted in the socio-economic crisis in Iran. Draconian economic sanctions against Iran have dramatically decreased the capacity of civil society, especially young activists. Trump’s maximalist and interventionist policy also reinforced Iranian nationalism. While the Iranian diaspora’s opposition has found a louder voice, the young Iranian pro-democracy activists inside the country have faced more pressure and been marginalized. The second part of the paper will focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how it has created more constraints for youth activists. Student and electoral activism are two important spaces of youth activism in Iran which the COVID-19 pandemic has limited. The crushing victories of hardliners in the recent elections (2020-2021) are partly the result of this limited space for young activists in the elections. Also, as one of the main pillars of the democratic movement in Iran, the student movement is in the doldrums. Based on interviews with the new generation of Iranian activists, this paper looks at the youth activism in the last two decades in Iran and argues that the socio-economic crisis resulting from the foreign policy tensions and public health emergency has created tremendous obstacles for Iranian youth and helped the Iranian authoritarians consolidate their power.