Iran’s reclusive new supreme leader is urging his country to wage a different kind of struggle for regional dominance: a baby boom.
In a written message released Tuesday, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei told a group of pro-natalist activists that Iran’s path to “great power” status runs through the maternity ward, calling on citizens to embrace a “culture of childbearing” and reverse one of the steepest fertility declines in modern history.
“By earnestly pursuing the correct, necessary policy of population growth, the great Iranian nation will be able to play a major role and experience strategic leaps in the future,” Khamenei wrote in a post on X.
A longer version of the remarks, carried by state broadcaster IRIB, told activists, “It is hoped that your sincere efforts will lead to fruitful results, God willing.”
The message marks a notable shift in tone for the younger Khamenei, whose brief tenure has been defined almost entirely by martial rhetoric directed at Israel and the United States. He was appointed supreme leader in March, days after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the joint US-Israeli strike on February 28 that triggered the ongoing war with the Islamic Republic. Mojtaba Khamenei was himself wounded in the bombardment and has not appeared in public since. His communications have been limited to written statements attributed to his office.
The new directive lands against a demographic backdrop that has alarmed Iranian officials for nearly a decade. Iran’s fertility rate stood at roughly 6.5 children per woman in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution. By 2024, the World Bank put it at 1.7. Some Iranian officials now place the figure even lower. The secretary of Iran’s National Population Headquarters said in December that fertility had fallen below 1.5, well under the 2.1 rate needed to maintain a stable population without immigration. Tehran province has reported rates as low as 1.3.
The country recorded just under 980,000 births in the Iranian calendar year ending March 20, the lowest annual total since 1955, according to figures from Iran’s Civil Registration Organization. The United Nations Population Division had not projected Iran to fall below the one-million-births threshold until 2050.
Iran’s population currently stands at roughly 92 million, making it the 17th most populous country in the world. That figure is less than half the population of neighboring Pakistan, which has continued to grow rapidly. Afghanistan, on Iran’s eastern border, also continues to register robust population growth.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)