Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that the family is the principal foundation that shapes people's progress and ensures the welfare and power of Islamic society of Iran, Tasnim news agency reported.

The Islamic republic needs to move toward creation of a family-oriented society that functions on the basis of an "Islamic model of family," Khamenei said.

"As the underlying entity and cornerstone of the Islamic society, family is the locus of growth, human sublimity, and the source of well-being, flourishing, prowess, and spiritual promotion for the country and the Islamic establishment," he was quoted as saying by Tehran Times daily.

To this end, all the plans, regulations, educational and cultural programs as well as social and economic projects in the country should pay special regard to the importance of family institution, he stressed.

Also, he urged the need for a national movement to promote and facilitate marriage, urging effective ways to avoid tendencies which undermines the nucleus of family, Tasnim reported.

In this regard, revising, rectifying, and completing the judicial laws and the relevant procedures in connection with family is a necessity, he said.

Khamenei said that to this end, the establishment of a counseling system should be added to offer services before and after marriage and to protect the families from a breakdown.

These are instrumental to support the dignity of connubiality, motherhood, house holding, paternal and economic roles of men, he said, adding that this will hopefully prevent social abnormalities which loosen the foundations of family and results in divorce.

The Iranian leader called for fertility and increasing birth rate in order to have a young, healthy, dynamic, and booming society, according to Tehran Times.

The remarks of the Iranian leader were the outlines of general policies on family to be observed and followed by three branches of the establishment, namely the administration, the judicial and legislation systems.

Source : XINHUA