Iran in drive to encourage couples to have more children Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, ordered the abolition of the £10 billion family planning budget last year after labelling the policy a mistake and calling for the country's population - currently around 75 million - to rise to 150 million. Mohammad Ismail Motlagh, general manager of the health ministry's family, school health and population programme, said the main goal was to encourage couples to avoid producing single-child families, which he said was leading to "social and emotional problems." "In the marriage training course, we have focused more on the child-producing because the single-child issue has caused so many problems and provoked much debate," he told the semi-official Fars news agency. For this reason, I am suggesting that families should have more than one child and reduce the gaps in pregnancy to only two years. If the pregnancy gaps exceed two years, couples should revise their methods and make plans in this regard. Iran originally introduced family planning following a population explosion in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The programme has been criticised by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said it weakened the country ability to compete with the West.