Recently, Ahmadinejad called for a population boom in Iran:
Mr Ahmadinejad said: “I am against saying that two children are enough. Our country has a lot of capacity. It has the capacity for many children to grow in it. It even has the capacity for 120 million people. Westerners have got problems. Because their population growth is negative, they are worried and fear that if our population increases, we will triumph over them.”
Why the rush to reproduce? Any baby boom initiated now wouldn't be combat-ready until the later 2020s. However, one lesson of Iraq is that occupying and holding onto territory needs manpower. Perhaps it's intended to enable Iranian regional expansion in a generation. If Iran contends that Israel will be wiped off the map, they may seek to fill the gap.
Another scenario is to ensure that Shiite muslims aren't demographically triumphed over by Sunni muslims. It's also worth noting that Iran's replacement rate is below the United States:
Perhaps the biggest surprise, given received notions about the Arab/Muslim expanse, is the recent spread of sub-replacement fertility to parts of the Arab and the Muslim world. Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon are now sub-replacement countries, as is Turkey. And there is the remarkable case of Iran, with a current TFR of under 1.9, which is lower than the United States'. Between 1986 and 2000, the country's TFR plummeted from well over 6 to just over 2.
An even longer-term scenario would be the hope of ensuring that Iran has enough population to support retired workers later this century.
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