The Iranian government has launched an official matrimonial website in an attempt to encourage millions of single adults to marry.
The state-run matchmaking website, Hamsan.Tebyan.net (find your equal), is part of Iranian government's plan to boost population amid fears that birth rate could fall.
Iran has more than 11 million young single adults in marriage-age range, official estimates revealed, according to Al-Monitor. In Iran, the customary marriage age range is 20-34 for men and 15-29 for women.
"We face a family crisis in Iran," Iranian deputy minister for sport and youth Mahmoud Golzari said while launching website in Tehran on Monday, according to AFP.
"There are many people who are single, and when that happens it means no families and no children. This should have happened a long time ago," he said. He also set a target of 100,000 marriages through the website over the next twelve months.
The site provides a platform for bachelors who are looking for a potential life partner. It is managed by the Islamic Development Organization and monitored by a group of expert matchmakers who will facilitate marriages as per specific criteria like background, education etc.
Mahmoud Golzari, however, clarified the website is not for dating. "The matchmaking website you are seeing today is not a website for introducing boys and girls to each other," he said, according to Associated Press.
We don't claim that we are solving all the problems. But the problem we are tackling here is that of finding a partner," Zohre Hosseini, project manager for the matchmaking site, told AFP.
Iran, under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promotes marriages and Islamic lifestyle forcefully. A women's magazine was closed in April after it published a front-page spread about "white marriage," the term used in Iran to describe live-in relationship, according to Middle East Eye.
