Abbas Amanat

These are the secular middle class of the Pahlavi era.

In the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic society of their own.

The bad news for them was that that didn't happen, and that memory persisted, and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was, because there was, of course, the demographic revolution.

That's the very foundation of it, is the demographic revolution.

Population in Iran, I've written an article about it, actually.

Population in Iran since the turn of the century, last century, 20th century, population of Iran was about 9 million or so.

It's now 83 million.

And that is, since 1979, the population was 35 million.

Between the past 40 years, it's basically doubled.

So it's 83 million.

Although, one of the great successes, I don't want to bore you with the details about the demography, but it's important.

Demographics is not boring.

Well, you can see that the birth rate was very high.

Otherwise, you wouldn't have doubled your population in a matter of four decades.

But Iranians, because of the urban shift to an urban population, because of the growth of the middle class, because of the education...

They basically, the pattern of growth, population growth changed.

Iran used to be 2.8 or 3% birth rate in around 1980s, I would say, 1970s, 1980s.

Now it is 1.1%.

And it's probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control.

Despite the government's consistent attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids, middle class refuses to do that.