Recent comments by Iranian officials are a clear indication that there is a sense of absolute confusion among politicians with regard to population policies.
Previous policies in this field represent a roller coaster over the past three decades. Initially, after 1979, birth control policies were discontinued as they were seen as a Western tool to keep the populations of developing countries like Iran low. In the late 1980s, when the country was faced with one of the fastest population growth rates in the world, the government introduced birth control policies to contain the uncontrolled growth. In fact, the country succeeded in reducing the population growth from its peak of more than 3% in the 1980s, to some 1.5% by the late 1990s.
