- The Iranian Supreme Guide, Mojtaba Khamenei, launched an appeal on Tuesday, May 19, to Iranians asking them to increase births.
- The fertility rate in the Islamic Republic increased from 6.5 in 1979 to 1.7 in 2024.
- Iran, with around 92 million inhabitants, is the 17th most populous country in the world.
Follow the full coverage
Middle East: the Strait of Hormuz still at the heart of negotiations
Mojtaba Khamenei comes out of silence to speak… birth rate. The Iranian Supreme Guide, who has not appeared in public since his appointment in March, called on Iranians on Tuesday, May 19, to increase births for the good of the country.
“By seriously pursuing the appropriate and necessary policy on demographic growth, the great Iranian nation will be able to play a major role and experience strategic progress in the future,”
he wrote in extracts from a letter published on the social network
The Iranian leader was responding to a collective letter from civil society groups concerned with demographics. “We hope that your dedicated efforts… will lead to fruitful results, God willing,”
he added according to a longer version of his text, broadcast by the public channel Irib.
Through the rigorous pursuit of a correct and imperative policy of population growth, the great Iranian nation will be able, in the future, to make great strides towards the creation of a new civilization of Islamic Iran. — Ayatollah Sayed Mojtaba Khamenei (@fr_mkhamenei) May 19, 2026
The son of the late Ali Khamenei, who was reportedly injured in strikes on the first day of the Middle East war, has released only written statements since his appointment.
A fertility rate that has fallen
Iran, with around 92 million inhabitants, is the 17th most populous country in the world. But the fertility rate of Iranian women has fallen dramatically in recent decades, falling from 6.5 in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution, to just 1.7 in 2024, according to World Bank figures.
In 2020, an Iranian health official said public hospitals and clinics had stopped performing vasectomies or distributing contraceptives in order to stimulate population growth.
Read also
CHECK – Has the official portrait of the new Iranian Supreme Guide Mojtaba Khamenei been modified by AI?
Despite the damage caused to its territory by recent American-Israeli attacks, the Tehran regime believes it has emerged strengthened from the war by continuing in particular to control the Strait of Hormuz, strategic for global hydrocarbon trade.
To do “big steps towards the building of the new Islamic-Iranian civilization”,
Iranians must promote a “culture of procreation”
commented Mojtaba Khamenei.
