Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei calls for a 'culture of procreation' and asks Iranians to pretend to be children
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since his appointment in March, is calling on Iranians to increase the number of births for the good of the country.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader PHOTO: Facebook
“By seriously applying the appropriate and necessary population growth policy, the great Iranian nation will be able to play a major role and experience strategic progress in the future,” Mojtaba Khamenei wrote on Tuesday in a letter, excerpts of which were published on X, writes News.
The Ayatollah was responding to a collective letter from civil society groups dealing with demography.
“We hope that your devoted efforts (…) will yield fruitful results, Allah willing,” according to a longer version of the text, broadcast by the public station Irib.
Iran's supreme leader, who was reportedly wounded in attacks on the first day of the Iran War that killed his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, has only released written statements since being appointed.
“Culture of procreation”
Iran, which has a population of approximately 92 million inhabitants, is the 17th most populous country in the world.
However, the level of Iranian fertility has dropped spectacularly in the last decades, from 6.5 in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution, to only 1.7 in 2024, according to the World Bank.
In 2020, an Iranian health official announced that public hospitals and clinics had stopped performing vasectomies or distributing contraceptives in order to stimulate population growth.
Despite the damage caused on Iranian territory by recent attacks by the United States and Israel, Tehran believes that it has emerged from the war strengthened by the fact that it continues to control the Strait of Hormuz, strategic in the international trade with hydrocarbons.
To do “big steps towards building the new Islamic-Iranian civilization”Iranians must promote a “culture of procreation”Mojtaba Khamenei also asked on Tuesday.
